In the collection of Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago — check current display status with the museum.
VOICES FROM HISTORY
“These landscapes of water and reflection have become an obsession. It is beyond my strength as an old man, and yet I want to render what I feel.”
— Claude Monet, letter to his friend Gustave Geffroy, August 1908
Sign in to join the discussion.
jim zaslaw · Jul 2026
I fell in love with the water lilies while seeing them in real life at the Monet Museum in Paris.
Douglas Finch · Jun 2026
No horizon, no sky, no bank. Just water. He quietly removed the ground you stand on and nobody complained.
Margaux Dubois · Jun 2026
I grew up near Giverny and the ponds are still exactly this color in late June. He was not exaggerating — the light there really does dissolve everything.
Rebecca Stein · Jun 2026
You grew up near Giverny?? I made the pilgrimage two summers ago and cried at the Japanese bridge like a complete tourist. No regrets.
Claude Monet (French, 1840–1926) — Water Lilies (Agapanthus)
Pierre-Auguste Renoir — Le Béal
Georges Seurat — Study for "A Sunday on La Grande Jatte"