EuroGraphics Nympheas VI by Claude Monet. Water Lilies. Art Print Poster (20 x 16)

In early 1893, three years after commencing work on the flower garden, Monet acquired an adjacent plot of land between the railroad tracks and the river Ru. By autumn, he had converted nearly one thousand square meters into a lavish lily pond, spanned by a wooden footbridge and ringed by an artful arrangement of flowers, trees, and bushes. Silent, mysterious, and contemplative, the water garden formed an apt contrast to the more traditional flower garden near the house, with its bold profusion of brilliantly colored blossoms laid out in rectilinear beds. Although Monet created the lily pond in part to fulfill his passion for gardening, he also intended it as a source of artistic inspiration. In his petition to the Préfet de l'Eure for clearance to build the pond, Monet specified that it would serve "for the pleasure of the eyes and also for the purpose of having subjects to paint" (quoted in Claude Monet: Late Work, exh. cat., Gagosian Gallery, New York, 2010, p. 23). And this it did, quickly surpassing the flower garden in Monet's hierarchy of subjects. Tucker has written, "That Monet would have preferred the water garden over the flower garden is understandable. It offered him the ultimate in variety: an infinite array of color; constantly changing reflections; continual tensions between surface and depth, near and far, stability and the unknown, with everything bathed in an endlessly shifting but ever-present light. Filled with feeling yet distinctly physical, it remained mysterious and deeply contemplative, much like the cosmos as a whole"