Apart from painting and gardening, I am good for nothing. My greatest masterpiece is my garden.

Monet purchased a house in Giverny, on the edge of Normandy, in 1890. Three years later he bought an adjoining plot with a small pond, which he then transformed into a water garden brimming with imported lilies and spanned by a Japanese wooden footbridge. The artist spent the last three decades of his life developing his beloved garden and creating more than 250 paintings of the subject.

The first Waterlilies series (1897–99) depicts the entire pond—its water plants, overhanging trees and bridge—and includes glimpses of the horizon. By 1903 Monet had eliminated this element to focus instead on the surface of the pond and its reflections. He described creating ‘the illusion of an endless whole, of water without horizon or bank’. This avant-garde approach to landscape was further enhanced by the square format of his canvases, often unframed, suggesting continuous, infinite and limitless perception.

Monet’s rapid brushwork and restrained colour palette capture both the surface of the water, and the texture of aquatic plants and lilies. Many works in this series were created when the artist’s vision was declining. From 1905 Monet suffered from cataracts meaning he no longer perceived colours with the same intensity and his paintings shifted towards more green and purple tones. Monet’s Waterlilies series is now recognised as among his finest achievements, timeless and treasured across the world.