The pond in this painting almost didn't exist at all. Before Monet ever picked up a brush to paint it, his neighbors were in a fight to stop him from digging it.
What you're looking at
This 1906 painting shows only water: lily pads, their blossoms, and the reflections drifting across the surface of Monet's garden pond at Giverny. There's no riverbank, no horizon line, no sky except what's mirrored in the water itself. The Art Institute of Chicago's own catalogue, which holds this painting, notes that this canvas marks the point where Monet committed fully to painting the water's surface alone.
A pond his neighbors tried to stop
To build the pond, Monet had to petition local authorities to divert a branch of a nearby river into his garden. His neighbors objected, arguing that his exotic water plants would poison the water and endanger their cattle, and the council initially rejected his request. Monet appealed the decision and won, and the pond that resulted became the subject he would return to for the rest of his career.
It's easy to imagine Giverny's water garden as something that simply existed for Monet to paint. In reality, it was a contested, man-made project that he had to fight local bureaucracy to create.
One detail to look for
Look for where a lily pad's edge meets its own reflection, and where the reflection of the sky breaks apart around it. Monet is painting three things at once in nearly the same brushstroke: a solid object, a moving reflection, and open water.
See it at its real size
The original is smaller than most people expect, just 89.9 x 94.1 cm and nearly square, far from the room-sized murals people often picture. Our largest canvas is labeled honestly against that true scale. Shop the canvas print.