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Blue Ninfeas

Claude Monet. Between 1916 and 1919.

You could say that Monet was always connected to water in a special way. He began painting the famous rock of the coast of Étretat in Normadía, he made countless paintings of the Seine in Paris and ended his life painting the water lilies of his garden in Giverny.

Monet lived his last 16 years in this garden, which he designed and built to have lagoons and flowers, like water lilies, which are not typical of the area and which strongly remind us of the Japanese prints that so inspired the Impressionists. The painter stated that he was not good for anything other than painting and gardening.

The perspective that Monet uses in the series of water lilies and nymphae is eliminating the horizon, so there is no sky and in some of the pictures the observer only sees the reflection of the flowers and trees in the pond. Also striking is the use of a square format for the fabric, and that the distribution of the flowers is more or less homogeneous, so it does not cause a particular point of attention, as if what we are seeing is only a part of a larger image. The expression of color is extraordinary and the brushwork very bold, all of which shows us how at the end of his life Monet was creating a much more modern pictorial language.

Monet who was a tireless worker in his last years declared "I am completely absorbed by my work. These water landscapes and reflections have become an obsession. They are beyond the strength of an old man, and yet I am determined to put in writing what I feel. I have destroyed some, I have started others again and I hope something will come out of so much effort. "

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