What drew me to this magnificent piece of art was its mere size. It was the biggest painting displayed on the 5th floor of the Museum of Modern Art. This painting, consisting of three panels was painted by the French Impressionist Claude Monet. Monet was born in 1840 in Paris and died in Giverny at the age of eighty-six. It was when he lived in Giverny that he created this peaceful painting that he named Water Lilies. Monet’s gardens are the source of his inspiration. His representation of the water lilies in the painting are abstract. An inspiration that required six full-time gardeners to upkeep.
According to Monet the aim for Water Lilies was to show “the illusion of an endless hole, of water without horizon or bank”. The painting is an observation of his garden in Giverny. It was made with oil on canvas during the period of 1914-1926.
Monet was the first French Impressionist. Impressionism was an art movement that was not popular among the French establishment. They violated the “right” way to paint by not using lines or contours but instead small brush strokes. The impressionist emphasized to accurately display light and nature, often with a context of time. When I first sat down to gaze upon this mighty creation I could feel its importance to the human soul.
This artwork was displayed in a big room, with two of Monet’s smaller paintings on the opposite side of the room. In the middle of the room there was a big place to sit and gaze into his great work. I sat down with strangers surrounding me on both ends. Instantaneously, a calmness started to grow from inside and within a few moments the painting had managed to shut out the outside world. The Museum of Modern Art had became quite at 3 pm on a Friday. Going from a stressful day to a quiet day in a matter of seconds is not possible for me. This painting infused me with a relief, it washed away all the worries and then there was a calmness in my mind that I haven’t felt since summer.
The peace came from the scale of the painting but also that it made sense. Everything in the picture was connected. Shockingly, I heard a rumour that while Monet was painting during this period he was losing his sight. Which makes me wonder if he made the painting so large because he could not see detail.