Monet's Water Lillies

Day 9: Sunday 5th Jan

On the first Sunday of the month most national Museums have free entry so after a late start we walked through the Tuilerie Gardens and lined up to go through the L'Orangerie on the banks of the Seine (beside the Place de la Concorde).  This museum features  Claude Monet's 'Water Lilies' series which he produced near the end of his life.  Monet produced 250 paintings of water lilies between 1900 and the end of his life.  It is amazing that virtually anyone in the western world would know and appreciate at least some of these 250 paintings - an amazing legacy that has promoted peace in each and every viewer. The Water Lilies series were a culmination of Monet's work and span across two elliptical rooms.  The paintings have no sky nor edges to the pond so they have the impression of a seamless endless water within a luxuriant garden.  They were first presented to the public in 1927 but Monet worked on the project during the war years and wanted the painting and rooms to be a haven for peaceful meditation. Even despite the crowds the rooms did create a sense of peace and reflection and everyone seemed to quiet and clam as they went through.

Andre Derain Harlequin and Pierrot (1924)

In the floor below the Water Lilies there are exhibited a range of paintings from artists including Cezanne, Renoir, Gaugin, Andre Derain, Douanier Rousseau, Henri Matisse and Picasso.  The exhibition is informative in that it traces the shift from impressionism and post impressionism to cubism (paintings in cubic shapes) and abstract art.  Although you could not take photos I have attached one important painting from Andre Derain in which the two figures from the Italian comedy tradition are paradoxically playing in the desert with stringless guitars and tortured expressions.  This painting was retrospectively seen as pointing to abstract art and away from realism in that its message is not what it appears.