The Water Lily Legacy

Monet's final water lily paintings reached a scale and abstraction that anticipated developments fifty years later. The largest canvases — over six feet tall and forty feet long — immerse viewers in shimmering color where water, sky, and reflection blur into one.

He made these works while cataracts distorted his color perception, producing canvases dominated by reds and yellows he couldn't see clearly. Surgery restored his vision but horrified him: he destroyed several paintings on seeing what his impaired eyes had created, then repainted them with corrected color.