Claude Monet - Water Lilies, Evening Effect Envelope

Water Lilies, Evening Effect (Nymphéas. Effet du soir), 1897 - Claude Monet, oil on canvas. Claude Monet (Paris, 1840 - Giverny, 1926) was a French Impressionist painter. This early water-lily painting dates from the period when Monet was beginning to turn his carefully constructed Giverny pond into a sustained artistic subject. He had obtained permission to dig it in 1893, not without difficulty with the local authorities, and called it his water garden. The title identifies a specific evening effect, linking the new motif to his established practice of revisiting subjects under changing light. The lilies, painted naturalistically, open or in bud, float across the pond while reflections complicate the distinction between surface and depth, and no horizon is visible. The work precedes the famous bridge series of 1899 and the later horizonless water-lily canvases, an early stage of a theme that would occupy him for nearly three decades.