Claude Monet Water Lillies

Claude Monet’s painting Water Lilies is a beautiful impressionist representation of just what its title suggests: water lilies floating on a pond. The scene is simply that of some of the wonders and beauties of nature and the loveliness of its plant life and flowers adrift on a lake. The painting is filled with various shades of cool colors; violets, blues, and greens are all blended together with white and the soft, impressionist design of the water lilies softly gliding on the lake all create an extremely soothing effect. Additionally, there are the smallest hints of warmer colors like pinks and reds that add a tinge of liveliness to the painting. As to the elements used on his paintings, in this particular piece of the series, Monet used a large amount of circular shapes to represent the lilies as well was vertical lines to
Consequently, he dedicated the majority of the last 30 years of his life to this ambitious project of his (“15 Facts” & “Interpretive Resource”). Unfortunately, many criticized his work. The critics called it messy and claimed that the impressionist portrayal of the flora, the water lighting were not an artistic choice by the painter but rather the fact that Monet had blurry vision at this stage in life because of his cataracts (“15 Facts”). This eventually led to Monet becoming such a perfectionist with his work that it all resulted in him destroying several of the pieces as they did not meet his newly formed standards. In fact, “Monet destroyed 15 of his Water Lilies right before they were to be exhibited at the Durand-Ruel gallery in Paris. Apparently, the artist was so unhappy with the paintings that he decided to ruin them rather than have the work go on public display” (“Interpretive