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Claude Monet (artist) French, 1840 - 1926 The Japanese Footbridge, 1899 oil on canvas Overall: 81.3 x 101.6 cm (32 x 40 in.) framed: 101 x 120.7 x 7.6 cm (39 3/4 x 47 1/2 x 3 in.) Gift of Victoria Nebeker Coberly, in memory of her son John W. Mudd, and Walter H. and Leonore Annenberg 1992.9.1 |
Object 7 of 7
Monet began to paint the lily pond in his garden at Giverny while he was completing his Rouen cathedral series. In the last decades of his life, his prized water garden became his most important—and eventually only—subject. He began construction of the water garden soon after he moved to Giverny, petitioning local authorities to divert water from the nearby river. Monet remade the landscape with the same artifice he applied to his paintings—and then he used it, in turn, as his creative focus.
The watery surface, like the atmospheric enveloppe Monet sought around the cathedrals and other series subjects, unified his canvases. The sky has already disappeared from this painting; the lush foliage rises all the way to the horizon and space is flattened by the decorative arch of the bridge. Monet gave equal emphasis to the physical qualitites of his painting materials and to the landscape motif he depicted. The materiality of the painted surface is particularly integral to the cathedrals and somewhat less so here. In later lilypond paintings, even more of the setting will evaporate, and the water’s surface alone will occupy the entire canvas. Floating lily pads and mirrored reflections assume equal stature, blurring distinctions between solid objects and transitory effects of light. Monet had always been interested in reflections, seeing their fragmented forms as the natural equivalence for his own broken brushwork.
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