Museé de L’orangerie Paris: Claude Monet’s Water Lillie’s

Many people have seen a photograph of the famous Claude Monet’s Water Lilly paintings. The series consists of 250 oil paintings, Museé de L’orangerie houses 8 of the great Nymphéas [Water Lillies]. These panels are assembled side by side all of which are the same height but vary in lengths so that they could be hung along curved walls in an egg-shaped room.

The major project inspired by a water lily garden occupied Monet for three decades, he started in the late 1890’s and the project came to an end in 1926 when Monet passed away. The word nymphéa comes from the Greek word nymphé, meaning nymph. The whole idea of this word which was used to give most of the painting’s their names comes from a classical myth. The myth attributes the birth of a flower to a nymph who was dying of love for Hercules.

When looking at a reproduced image of these paintings the viewer does not get an understanding of how the paintings had been composed in such a clever way. Standing in this egg-shaped room is overwhelming, the viewer is submerged by these beautiful oil paintings. Almost as though you are walking through Monet’s flower garden at his home in Giverny, Normandy. Being able to stand so close and see all the small brush strokes and colours which depict the water lilies is astonishing. When in the middle of the room the separate purples, greens, and blues which were so clear when close up, merge into this amazing scenery. The skylight windows create light which floods into the room and depending on the weather changing the atmosphere within. This makes it more surreal to the feeling of looking at what Monet was viewing. The paintings and their layout echo in the orientation of this building. In Monet’s words, his aim was to create “the illusion of an endless whole, of a wave with no horizon and no shore” this was defiantly achieved.