50 Fun Facts About Monet's Water Lilies

Monet was a leading figure of which art movement?

The movement took its name from his 1872 painting Impression, Sunrise.

What is the French title of Monet's Water Lilies series?

The name is the French word for the water lily genus, and the series runs to roughly 250 canvases.

Roughly how many oil paintings make up the Water Lilies series?

They were the main focus of his work for the last 31 years of his life.

Monet's house and lily pond lie in which region of France?

With 530,000 visitors in 2010 the estate was the region's second most visited site after Mont Saint-Michel.

Which structure spanning the pond appears in many of the garden paintings?

Built by a local craftsman in 1893, it was later draped in wisteria; termites had undermined it by the time restoration began.

Many of the Water Lilies were painted while Monet suffered from which eye condition?

He finally had surgery in 1923 and, once 'able to see the real colours', began destroying canvases from before the operation.

The museum built to house eight great Water Lilies murals stands in the west corner of which Paris garden?

Its two oval rooms opened to the public on 16 May 1927, a few months after Monet's death.

The Orangerie's two oval rooms of Water Lilies are arranged to form which shape?

The eight panels are two metres high and lit by skylights at Monet's insistence.

How long, end to end, are the eight Water Lilies panels in the Orangerie?

Because the building runs east to west, the rooms lie on the same solar axis as the Arc de Triomphe and the Louvre.

Which French statesman, a friend of Monet, insisted the Water Lilies murals go to the Orangerie rather than the Musée Rodin?

At Monet's funeral he tore off the black pall, declaring 'No black for Monet!', and replaced it with a flowered cloth.

What was the Orangerie building originally built for in 1852?

Its Seine-facing side is glass to let in light, while the north wall is almost windowless against the cold.

Under what name was the Orangerie first inaugurated on 17 May 1927?

It was soon annexed to the Musée du Luxembourg and given its present formal name.

How many Water Lilies panel paintings were displayed at the Orangerie in May 1927, according to Monet's biography?

Few people came; his late work was largely ignored until it was rediscovered in the 1950s.

In which year did Monet begin painting the water lilies that would occupy him for the rest of his life?

The first group he exhibited, in 1900, was devoted mainly to his Japanese bridge.

On 5 February 1893 Monet bought a marshy plot across the railway line from his house, crossed by which small brook?

It was a diversion of the Epte, itself a tributary of the Seine, and Clemenceau joked that Monet 'has the train at home'.

Why did some Giverny villagers oppose Monet's plan to divert water into his new pond in 1893?

The council turned him down in April; the Prefect approved it in July after Monet explained he wanted aquatic plants 'for the pleasure of the eyes and in order to have subjects to paint'.

Visiting in October 1893, which young diarist recorded 'an ornamental lake across which is a green bridge which looks rather Japanese'?

The daughter of Berthe Morisot was visiting with her mother; the little footbridge was built by a local craftsman.

At the 1889 Exposition Universelle, Monet is believed to have met which horticulturist, the breeder of hybrid coloured water lilies?

Monet planted native white lilies alongside imported cultivars from South America and Egypt to get yellows, blues and pinks.

By 1904, how many full-time gardeners was Monet employing at Giverny?

He wrote daily instructions to them and stayed the garden's architect even as his wealth grew.

After diverting more water in 1902, Monet enlarged the lily pond to roughly how many times its original size?

He added a small island, and after the 1910 Seine flood he recontoured the banks into their final shape, four times the original area.

How high did the Seine rise at Paris in the January 1910 flood that swamped Monet's water garden?

Alice reported Monet in despair, saying everything was lost and he must sell the house and the car.

How many Water Lilies paintings hung in the long-delayed exhibition Les Nymphéas that finally opened on 6 May 1909?

They dated from 1903 to 1908, and Monet had postponed the show repeatedly since 1906 while reworking and destroying canvases.

Around 1905, how did Monet change the shape of his Water Lilies canvases?

At the same time he stopped showing the pond's banks, so the water surface filled the whole picture.

By the mid-1910s Monet's fluid new style had made the lily pond the point of departure for what?

Critic Claude Roger-Marx said the 1909 show had 'reached the ultimate degree of abstraction and imagination'.

During the First World War, Monet painted a series of which tree at the edge of his pond as a homage to fallen French soldiers?

His younger son Michel was serving at the front at the time.

Which two artists' botched cataract operations made Monet reluctant to have surgery himself?

He said he would rather have poor sight and keep painting; Clemenceau eventually talked him into the 1923 operation.

After his 1923 cataract surgery Monet struggled with cyanopsia, a distortion that tints vision which colour?

Tinted Zeiss lenses helped, though his left eye eventually had to be covered with a black lens.

In 1913 Monet travelled to London to consult which German ophthalmologist about his eyes?

He was prescribed new glasses and turned down surgery on his right eye.

What was said of the Water Lilies at the time of Monet's death in December 1926?

He died of lung cancer at 86 and asked for a simple funeral; only about fifty people came.

Which movement 'rediscovered' Monet's late Water Lilies in the 1950s?

A 1952 essay by André Masson helped change how the paintings were seen after decades of neglect.

How many Water Lilies paintings from around the world were gathered for the special 1999 exhibition at the Orangerie?

The paintings hang in museums from the Met and MoMA to the Tate and the National Museum of Wales.

Le Bassin aux Nymphéas sold in June 2008 for almost £41 million at which auction house, then a record for a Monet?

The 1919 painting had been seen in public just once in the previous 80 years, and the estimate was only £18 to £24 million.

For how much had Le Bassin aux Nymphéas sold at Sotheby's in New York in 1971, before its 2008 record?

Norton Simon had owned it around 1968; it went to Elizabeth Tangeman of Columbus, Indiana, and hung in the Miller House.

Nymphéas en fleur set a new Monet record of $81.7 million in 2018 when sold from the collection of which family?

It came from the estate of David Rockefeller and his wife.

What happened when the 1906 Nymphéas was offered at Christie's in June 2010 with a £30-40 million estimate?

Bidding reached £29 million, just short of the reserve.

Which scholar catalogued the Water Lilies in his Monet: Catalogue Raisonné?

Ross King's 2017 book Mad Enchantment tells the story of the painting of the series.

Which stepdaughter and daughter-in-law looked after Monet and Giverny in his final years and until her own death in 1947?

After she died the garden went untended, lily paintings were stacked against studio walls and termites undermined the bridge.

To which body did Michel Monet bequeath the Giverny estate and his father's remaining paintings when he died in a car crash in 1966?

He had preferred safaris in Africa to living in the family home, and had no heirs.

Which former chief curator of Versailles led the restoration of Giverny with American donors' money?

Lila Acheson Wallace, who already owned several Monets, was the first major benefactress; the pond had to be dug out again.

In which year did the restored house and gardens open to visitors under the foundation that bears the painter's name?

With 530,000 visitors in 2010 it was the region's second most visited site after Mont Saint-Michel.

How many Japanese woodcut prints did Michel inherit with Monet's Giverny collection?

The prints had a pronounced influence on his art and remain on display in the house.

Which Paris museum, made famous by Michel's 1966 donation, holds over 300 works by his father including Impression, Sunrise?

Armed robbers stole nine paintings from it in 1985; they turned up in a villa in Corsica five years later.

Which 2005 Banksy painting reworks the lily pond and its green footbridge with dumped shopping trolleys?

It is listed among works related to the Water Lilies series.

How many bricks are in the Lego Art set of Bridge Over a Pond of Water Lilies made with the Metropolitan Museum of Art?

The Met's own catalogue Monet's Years at Giverny: Beyond Impressionism covers the paintings in depth.

For roughly how many years at the end of his life were the water lilies Monet's main subject?

Monet lived to 86, and the garden he built at Giverny kept him painting the same pond for the last three decades of his life.

Which architect did Monet help design the Orangerie's oval rooms for his murals?

Monet also insisted on skylights so the panels would be seen in natural light, with the rooms sitting on the sun's east-west axis from the Arc de Triomphe to the Louvre.

How tall is each of the eight Water Lilies panels installed at the Orangerie?

The panels are only about two metres high but run for 91 metres end to end around the two oval rooms.

In which year was Monet's donation of the Water Lilies to the Orangerie finalized?

The State had only taken over the Orangerie building in 1921, originally intending it as a showcase for living artists.

Which institution marked its 150th anniversary in 2020 with a show of Monet's Water Lilies?

Water Lilies canvases hang in museums from Cardiff to Kansas City, so a Monet celebration was a natural birthday choice for the Boston institution.

Which writer's 2017 book Mad Enchantment tells the story of Monet painting the Water Lilies?

King had earlier written Brunelleschi's Dome and The Judgment of Paris, another book about French painting.