Still working during the 1920s, Claude Monet lived longer than any other leading French Impressionist artist. His later paintings were every bit as inventive as those of his audacious youth in the 1860s and 1870s. Many were far larger too. Water-Lilies from his final decade measures more than 425cm across. We don't so much look at it as allow the canvas to absorb us in its aura.
A reason for this late creativity may be that Monet restricted himself to a single, inexhaustible subject. He became fixated on the lower of two gardens at his country house at Giverny, west of Paris. Working in seclusion, over and again he painted the pond there: water-lilies on its surface, a Japanese bridge arching across, weeping willows and their reflections, the infinite play of light and shadow at every hour. We see only a small part of his garden, but it is a whole world.
Monet's reputation faded after his death but within 25 years had rebounded spectacularly. He came to be celebrated as a leading precursor of abstraction, series painting and not least immersive art, all of which play so large a role in contemporary art today.
