id: 136510 accession number: 1960.81 share license status: CC0 url: https://clevelandart.org/art/1960.81 updated: 2024-04-11 11:01:48.545000 Water Lilies (Agapanthus), c. 1915–26. Claude Monet (French, 1840–1926). Oil on canvas; framed: 204.9 x 430.3 x 6 cm (80 11/16 x 169 7/16 x 2 3/8 in.); unframed: 201.3 x 425.6 cm (79 1/4 x 167 9/16 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, John L. Severance Fund and an anonymous gift 1960.81 title: Water Lilies (Agapanthus) title in original language: series: series in original language: creation date: c. 1915–26 creation date earliest: 1915 creation date latest: 1926 current location: 010 Focus Gallery creditline: John L. Severance Fund and an anonymous gift copyright: --- culture: France, late 19th century-early 20th century technique: oil on canvas department: Modern European Painting and Sculpture collection: Mod Euro - Painting 1800-1960 type: Painting find spot: catalogue raisonne: --- CREATORS * Claude Monet (French, 1840–1926) - artist Claude Monet spent his youth in Le Havre in Normandy, where his father worked as a wholesale grocer. By the age of sixteen, he had exhibited some of his caricatures in an art supply store, leading to his acquaintance with Boudin (q.v.). It was Boudin who first encouraged him to paint out of doors. In 1859 Monet traveled to Paris, where he saw Boudin's salon debut and met Constant Troyon (1810-1865). A year later he joined the Académie Suisse, where he was introduced to Pissarro (q.v.), but his studies were interrupted in 1861 when he was drafted for a seven-year stint in the military. His family would pay for his release from military duties only if he gave up painting. Finding this unacceptable, Monet served for one year in Algeria before an early return to France to convalesce after a severe illness. In 1862 he met Jongkind (q.v.), another important influence on the young painter's development. Monet's father then allowed him to pursue his art career in Paris, where he entered the studio of the Swiss painter Charles Gleyre (1806-1874). He studied with Gleyre until 1864 and befriended Frédéric Bazille (1841-1870), Renoir (q.v.), and Sisley (q.v.), with whom he painted in the forest of Fontainebleau (Déjeuner sur l'herbe, 1865, two fragments in Musée d'Orsay, Paris). Monet first exhibited at the Salon of 1865 and would do so again in 1866, 1868, and 1880. In 1868 he shared a studio with Bazille and Renoir but was soon forced to leave Paris to escape his creditors. He took his mistress, Camille Doncieux, and their son, Jean, to Fécamp, then Étretat, and finally Saint-Michel. There Renoir provided hospitality, and the two also painted at the boating and bathing center of La Grenouillère on the Seine. In 1870 Monet married Camille and, to escape the Franco-Prussian War, left for London, where he remained for nine months and met Durand-Ruel, his first dealer. In the summer of 1871 he visited the Netherlands and then settled in Argenteuil, to the west of Paris. He converted a boat into a studio, as Daubigny (q.v.) had done before him, allowing him to explore different viewpoints for his landscapes. He assisted in the organization of the First Impressionist Exhibition in 1874, partly because Durand-Ruel's worsened business situation had prevented the dealer from buying his art. The following year he participated in the Hôtel Drouot sale with Morisot (q.v.), Renoir, and Sisley. In 1878 Monet and his wife moved to Vétheuil with the Hoschedés, who had previously commissioned some works. Camille died the following year, and, while Ernest Hoschedé spent most of his time in Paris trying to settle his precarious financial situation, Monet stayed behind with Ernest's wife, Alice. In 1881 he moved with her and her children to Poissy and within two years was living at Giverny, where he would remain for the rest of his life. He painted some of his famous scenes-the haystack and poplar series, for example- in 1890-91. Ernest Hoschedé died in 1891, and Monet married Alice the following year. At Giverny, Monet explored the themes of his garden and water lilies. He continued to travel, going to Norway in 1895, making three trips to London from 1899 through 1901, and taking Alice to Venice in 1908. The final years of his life were mainly spent working on his Great Decorations, large paintings of a water lily pond designed for two oval rooms at the Paris Orangerie. Monet is generally considered the most typical exponent of impressionism. --- measurements: Framed: 204.9 x 430.3 x 6 cm (80 11/16 x 169 7/16 x 2 3/8 in.); Unframed: 201.3 x 425.6 cm (79 1/4 x 167 9/16 in.) state of the work: edition of the work: support materials: inscriptions: inscription: Estate stamp lower left: Claude Monet translation: remark: --- CURRENT EXHIBITIONS title: Paths of Abstract Art opening date: 1960-10-05T04:00:00 Paths of Abstract Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (October 5-November 13, 1960). title: Year in Review - Nineteen Hundred Sixty opening date: 1960-11-30T05:00:00 Year in Review - Nineteen Hundred Sixty. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (November 30, 1960-January 1, 1961). title: Juxtapositions opening date: 1965-09-11T04:00:00 Juxtapositions. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (September 11-October 10, 1965). title: Fifty Years of Modern Art opening date: 1966-06-15T04:00:00 Fifty Years of Modern Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (June 15-July 31, 1966). title: Color and Field, 1890 - 1970 opening date: 1970-09-15T04:00:00 Color and Field, 1890 - 1970. Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY (organizer) (September 15-November 1, 1970); Dayton Art Institute, Dayton, OH (November 20, 1970-January 10, 1971); The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (February 3-March 14, 1971). title: Monet's Years at Giverny: Beyond Impressionism opening date: 1978-04-22T05:00:00 Monet's Years at Giverny: Beyond Impressionism. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY (organizer) (co-organizer) (April 22-July 9, 1978); Saint Louis Art Museum, St. Louis, MO (co-organizer) (August 1-October 8, 1978). title: The Monet Triptych: Water Lilies opening date: 1979-04-05T05:00:00 The Monet Triptych: Water Lilies. The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO (organizer) (co-organizer) (April 5-June 15, 1979); The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (September 18, 1979-February 17, 1980); Saint Louis Art Museum, St. Louis, MO (co-organizer) (April 1-September 1, 1980). title: Creativity in Art and Science, 1860-1960 opening date: 1987-09-16T04:00:00 Creativity in Art and Science, 1860-1960. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (September 16-November 8, 1987). title: CMA Highlights opening date: 2005-06-21T00:00:00 CMA Highlights. The Cleveland Museum of Art (organizer) (June 21-September 11, 2005). title: Monet to Dalí: Modern Masters from the Cleveland Museum of Art opening date: 2006-05-27T00:00:00 Monet to Dalí: Modern Masters from the Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (October 21, 2007-January 13, 2008). title: Monet in Normandy opening date: 2006-06-17T00:00:00 Monet in Normandy. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (February 18-May 28, 2007). title: Monet's Water Lilies opening date: 2011-04-09T00:00:00 Monet's Water Lilies. The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO (organizer) (April 9-August 7, 2011); Saint Louis Art Museum, St. Louis, MO (October 2, 2011-January 22, 2012). title: Painting the Modern Garden: Monet to Matisse opening date: 2015-10-06T00:00:00 Painting the Modern Garden: Monet to Matisse. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (October 6, 2015-January 5, 2016); Royal Academy of Arts, London, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (January 30-April 20, 2016). title: Monet / Mitchell opening date: 2022-10-05T04:00:00 Monet / Mitchell. Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris, France (organizer) (October 5, 2022-February 27, 2023). title: Monet in Focus opening date: 2024-03-31T04:00:00 Monet in Focus. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (March 31-August 11, 2024). --- LEGACY EXHIBITIONS * {'description': 'Claude Monet. City Art Museum of St. Louis, St. Louis, MO; Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minneapolis, MN (1957).', 'opening_date': '1957-01-01T00:00:00'} * {'description': 'Essence of Nations. Valley House Gallery, Dallas, TX (November 1–14, 1959).', 'opening_date': '1959-11-01T05:00:00Z'} --- PROVENANCE Estate of the artist. date: footnotes: citations: Michel Monet, Giverny, through 1950 (according to Connaissance des arts 1966). date: footnotes: citations: Katia Granoff, Paris. Bought from her by Knoedler & Co. (stock number a 6420), July 1956. date: footnotes: citations: The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH date: 1960- footnotes: citations: --- fun fact: digital description: wall description: --- RELATED WORKS --- CITATIONS The Burlington Magazine. "Exhibitions: Paintiing in the Modern Garden." The Burlington Magazine 158, no. 1357 (April 2016): 300-301.
 page number: Reproduced: p. 301 url: Dumas, Ann, William H. Robinson, Clare A. P. Willsdon, Monty Don, James Priest, Heather Lemonedes, and Lucy I. Zimmerman. Painting the Modern Garden: Monet to Matisse. 2015. catalogue no. 139 page number: 290 url: City Art Museum of St. Louis. Claude Monet, a Loan Exhibition. 1957. page number: Reproduced: cat. no. 93 url: Sloane, J. C. "The Art of Impressionism: From Romanticism to Avant-Garde." In Romantic Art. Hilton Kramer, ed. New York: Art Digest, Inc, 1958. page number: Reproduced: p. 129 url: Spaeth, Eloise. American Art Museums and Galleries: An Introduction to Looking. New York, NY: Harper & Brothers, 1960. page number: Reproduced: p. 20 url: The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art XLVII. Cleveland: [The Museum] 1960. page number: Mentioned: p. 253; No. 66 url: Francis, Henry. "Claude Monet-- Water Lilies." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 47 (October 1960): 192-198. page number: Reproduced: 192-193 url: Henning, E. B. "Cleveland Museum of Art: From Turner to Gaston." Apollo: A Journal of the Arts 78 (December 1963): 481-488. page number: Reproduced: p. 484-485 url: Forge, Andrew. French Impressionists. London United Kingdom: British Broadcasting Corporation, 1966. page number: Reproduced: fig. 38 url: The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1966. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1966. page number: Reproduced: p. 197 url: https://archive.org/details/CMAHandbook1966/page/n221 "Waterlilies." Art in America: An Illustrated Magazine 54 (March 1966): 32. page number: Reproduced: p. 32 url: Alsop, Joseph. "Les Chefs-d'oeuvre de Premiere Importance du Second Musee des Etats-Unis." Connaissance des Arts 172 (June 1966): 54-63. page number: Reproduced: p. 57, 60 url: Lee, Sherman E. "The Forest and the Trees and Chinese Painting." National Palace Museum Quarterly 1, no. 2 (October 1966): 1-14. page number: Reproduced: Pl. 1-A url: The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1969. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1969. page number: Reproduced: p. 197 url: https://archive.org/details/CMAHandbook1969/page/n221 Henning, Edward B. "Color and Field." Art International 15 (May 1971): 46-50. page number: Reproduced: p. 46 url: Rouart, Denis, Jean Dominique Rey, Robert Maillard. Monet, nymphéas; ou, Les miroirs du temps. Paris, France: F. Hazan, 1972. page number: Reproduced: p. 177 url: Wildenstein, Daniel. Claude Monet: Biographie et Catalogue Raisonné. Lausanne: La Bibliothèque des arts, 1974. page number: Reproduced and mentioned: vol. 4, p. 316-322, no. 1975 url: House, John. Monet. London, United Kingdom: Oxford, 1977. page number: Reproduced: pl. 47, Mentioned: p. 12-13 url: Bell, Clive. The French Impressionists. London, United Kingdom: Phaidon Press, 1978. page number: Reproduced: Fig. 46 url: Isaacson, Joel. Claude Monet, Observation and Reflection. Oxford, United Kingdom: Phaidon, 1978. page number: Reproduced: p. 176 url: Moffett, Charles S. Monet's Water Lilies. Mount Vernon, NY: Artist's Ltd. Edition, 1978. page number: Reproduced: Pl 6 url: The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1978. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1978. page number: Reproduced: p. 220 url: https://archive.org/details/CMAHandbook1978/page/n240 Monet, Claude. Monet's Years at Giverny: Beyond Impressionism. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1978. page number: Referenced: cat. no. 76, Reproduced url: Gordon, Robert, and Charles F. Stuckey. "Blossoms and Blunders: Monet and the State." Art in America: An Illustrated Magazine 67 (January 1979): 102-117. page number: Reproduced: p. 112, fig. 12 url: Stuckey, Charles F. "Blossoms and Blunders: Monet and the State; II." Art in America 67 (May 1979): 109-125. page number: Reproduced: p. 125 url: Kelder, Diane. The Great Book of French Impressionism. New York, NY: Abbeville Press, 1980. page number: Reproduced: p. 221-222 url: The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art LXVII. Cleveland: [The Museum] 1980. page number: Reproduced: p. 187; Mentioned: p. 189 url: Failing, Patricia. "The Case of the Dismembered Masterpieces." ARTnews 79 (September 1980): 66-78. page number: Reproduced: p. 76-77 url: House, John. Monet. Oxford, United Kingdom: Phaidon, 1981. page number: Reproduced: No. 47 url: Cowart, Jack. "Impressionist and Post-impressionist Paintings." Bulletin (St. Louis Art Museum) 16, no. 2 (1982): 1-35. page number: Reproduced: p. 23 url: Borowitz, Helen O. "The Rembrandt and Monet of Marcel Proust." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art LXX, no. 2 (February, 1983):73-95. page number: Reproduced: p. 88, fig. 14 url: Peters, Mike, and Marilyn Jarvis. The World of Cartooning: How Caricatures Develop. Dayton, OH: Landfall Press, 1985. page number: Reproduced: p. 16 url: Larson, Dean M. Studying with the Masters: Lessons from Rubens, Velázquez, Turner, Degas, Monet, Sargent, Matisse. New York, NY: Watson-Guptill Publications, 1986. page number: Reproduced: p. 86 url: Henning, Edward B. Creativity in Art and Science, 1860-1960. [Cleveland, Ohio]: Published by the Cleveland Museum of Art in cooperation with Indiana University Press, 1987. page number: Mentioned and reproduced: P. 97, no. 4 url: Stuckey, Charles F. Waterlilies. New York, NY: H.L. Levin Associates, 1988. page number: Reproduced: p. 83 url: Thomson, Belinda, and Michael Howard. Impressionism. London, United Kingdom: Bison Books, 1988. page number: Reproduced: p. 124-125 url: Sagner-Düchting, Karin. Claude Monet, 1840-1926: ein Fest für die Augen. Köln,Germany: Benedikt Taschen Verlag, 1990. page number: Reproduced: p. 207 url: Strickland, Carol, and John Boswell. The Annotated Mona Lisa: A Crash Course in Art History from Prehistoric to Post-Modern. Kansas City: Andrews and McMeel, 1992. page number: Reproduced: p. 103 url: Cleveland Museum of Art. Masterpieces from East and West. New York, NY: Rizzoli International, 1992. page number: Reproduced: p. 166-167 url: Chong, Alan. European & American Painting in the Cleveland Museum of Art: A Summary Catalogue. Cleveland, Ohio: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1993. page number: Reproduced: p. 159 url: "1993 Annual Report." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 81, no. 6 (1994): 143-218. page number: Mentioned: p. 177 url: https://www.jstor.org/stable/25161457 Pelfrey, Robert H. Art and Mass Media. Dubuque, IA: Kendall/Hunt, 1996. page number: Reproduced: p. 169, fig. 7,8 url: Wildenstein, Daniel. Monet. Köln, Germany: Taschen, 1996. page number: Reproduced: vol. 1, p. 436 url: Sagner-Duchting, Karin. Claude Monet, 1840-1926: A Feast for the Eyes. Köln, Germany: Benedikt Taschen, 1998. page number: Reporduced: p. 119 url: Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes (Mexico). Maestros del impresionismo. México, D.F.: Istituto Nacional de Bellas Artes, 1998. page number: Reproduced: p. 59, fig. 14 url: D' Argencourt, Louise and Roger Diederen. The Cleveland Museum of Art: Catalogue of Paintings, Part Four; European Paintings of the 19th Century. Cleveland, OH:The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1999. page number: Reproduced: p. 159 url: Wildenstein, Daniel. Monet, or, The Triumph of Impressionism. Köln, Germany: Taschen,1999. page number: Reproduced: p. 436-437. url: May, Sally Ruth, Jane Takac, and Barbara J. Bradley. Knockouts: A Pocket Guide. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2001. page number: Reproduced: p. 56-57, no. 58 url: Lemonedes, Heather, Lynn Federle Orr, and David H. Steel. Monet in Normandy. New York, NY: Rizzoli, 2006. page number: Reproduced: p. 178 url: Lemonedes, Heather, "FILL THIS", Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland Art: The Cleveland Museum of Art Members Magazine. Vol. 47 no. 02, February 2007 page number: Mentioned & reproduced: p. 5 url: https://archive.org/details/CMAMM2007-02/page/n3 Rey, Jean Dominique, and Denis Rouart. Monet, Water Lilies: The Complete Series. Paris, France: Flammarion, 2008. page number: Reproduced: p. 145 url: Franklin, David and C. Griffith Mann. Treasures from the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland, OH: London, United Kingdom: Scala Books, 2012. page number: Reproduced: p. 302-303 url: Cleveland Museum of Art. The CMA Companion: A Guide to the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2014. page number: Mentioned and reproduced: P. 298 url: Dumas, Ann, William H. Robinson, Clare A. P. Willsdon, Monty Don, James Priest, and Heather Lemonedes. Painting the Modern Garden: Monet to Matisse. London, United Kingdom : Royal Academy of Arts, 2015. page number: Reproduced: P. 290 url: Amiot-Saulnier, Emmanuelle. "Le Jardin de Monet a Matisse." L'Estampille, l'objet d'art 521, (Mar. 2016): 28-35. page number: Reproduced: p. 30 url: Kelly, Simon. ""My Four Best Series": Monet's Panorama at the Hotel Biron." In Monet: the Late Years. Shackelford, George T. M., ed., 46-61. Fort Worth, Texas: Kimbell Art Museum; San Francisco: Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, New Haven; London: Distributed by Yale University Press, 2019. page number: Reproduced: P. 48-49,50, 59 url: Shackelford, George T. M. Monet: the Late Years. Fort Worth, Texas: Kimbell Art Museum; San Francisco: Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, New Haven; London: Distributed by Yale University Press, 2019. page number: Reproduced: P. 159 url: Arendsee, M., and M. Steinman-Arendsee. "Take the CAN disability aesthetics tour, at the Cleveland Museum of art." CAN Journal (Winter 2019/20): 76-87. page number: Mentioned: p. 81 url: Goldin, Marco. Il Giardino e la Luna: Arte dell'Ottocento dal Romanticismo all'Impressionismo. Milano: La nave di Teseo, 2021. page number: Reproduced: P. 508-509 url: Pagé, Suzanne, Angeline Scherf, and Marianne Mathieu. Claude Monet, Joan Mitchell. Paris: Fondation Louis Vuitton; [Paris]: Musée Marmottan Monet, Académie des beaux-arts; Vanves: Hazan, 2022. page number: Reproduced: Cat. no. 50 url: Kelly, Simon. "A Dialogue with Monet: Mitchell's Years in Vetheuil." In Monet/Mitchell: Painting the French Landscape, edited by Simon Kelly, 13-68. St. Louis, Missouri: Saint Louis Art Museum; Munich, Germany: Hirmer Verlag GmbH, 2023. page number: Mentioned: p. 27; reproduced: p. 31, fig. 12 url: --- IMAGES web: https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1960.81/1960.81_web.jpg print: https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1960.81/1960.81_print.jpg full: https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1960.81/1960.81_full.tif