Water Lilies (Agapanthus), about 1920–26
Oil on canvas
The Cleveland Museum of Art, John L. Severance Fund
1960.81
This monumental canvas was part of an ensemble designed by Monet as a memorial commemorating the end of World War I. Cleveland’s painting was originally intended to comprise the left panel of a decorative triptych that included canvases now in the Saint Louis Art Museum and the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City. However, in the ultimate realization of Monet’s decorative scheme at the Musée de l’Orangerie in Paris, the triptych was eliminated from the installation, and the artist reworked the paintings. The subtly abstracted motifs and delicate tonal surface of this painting convey the soothing properties of nature. It appropriately summates Monet’s intimate relationship with the natural world and with Normandy.
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Grainstack, Sun in the Mist, 1891
