Princeton University Art Museum, Princeton, Estados Unidos
OST - 90x89 - 1899
Water Lilies and
Japanese Bridge represents two of Monet’s greatest
achievements: his gardens at Giverny and the series of paintings they inspired.
In 1883 the artist moved to this country town, near Paris but just across the
border of Normandy, and immediately began to redesign the property. In 1893,
Monet purchased an adjacent tract, which included a small brook, and
transformed the site into an Asian-inspired oasis of cool greens, exotic plants,
and calm waters, enhanced by a Japanese footbridge. The serial approach
embodied in this work—one of about a dozen paintings in which Monet returned to
the same view under differing weather and light conditions—was one of his great
formal innovations. He was committed to painting directly from nature as
frequently as possible and whenever weather permitted, sometimes working on
eight or more canvases in the same day. Monet’s project to capture
ever-shifting atmospheric conditions came to be a hallmark of the Impressionist
style.
Water Lilies and Japanese Bridge represents two of Monet’s
greatest achievements: his gardens at Giverny and the paintings they inspired.
Monet moved to Giverny in 1883 and immediately began to develop the property.
For him, the gardens were both a passion and a second artistic medium. His
Asian garden was not part of the original estate; it was located on an adjacent
property with a small brook, which he purchased and enlarged into a pond for a
water garden in 1893. He transformed the site into an inspired vision of cool
greens and calm, reflective waters, enhanced by exotic plants such as bamboo,
ginkgo, and Japanese fruit trees and a Japanese footbridge. It was not until
1899, however, that he began a series of views of the site, of which this is
one.
A careful craftsman who reworked his canvases multiple times,
Monet was committed to painting directly from nature as much as possible and
for as long as he had the correct conditions; thus, he could work on as many as
eight or more canvases a day, devoting as little as an hour or less to each. In
this case, he set up his easel at the edge of the water-lily pond and worked on
several paintings of the subject as part of a single process.
Monet’s gardens and paintings show the same fascination with
the effects of time and weather on the landscape. Both are brilliant
expressions of his unique visual sensitivity and emotional response to nature.
At Giverny, he literally shaped nature for his brush, cultivating vistas to
paint.
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