Water Lily Pond 1919

This is one of Claude Monet's Water Lily Pond paintings, an oil on canvas. It's just gorgeous, isn't it? Look at those dominant gestural marks and the warm color palette. Imagine Monet at work here, outside, pushing paint around, shifting and improvising in that beautiful, dappled light. I sympathize with him! I wonder what it was like to stand in front of this canvas, trying to catch the fleeting light, to get that shimmering sense of movement and depth, the feel of the air. How do you capture water, anyway? The paint is applied so loosely, capturing a feeling, an essence. See those touches of yellow and green, the reflections in the water? It's like he's not just painting what he sees, but what he feels, and how he remembers. You can see what other painters have taken from Monet, and you realize how many painters he was looking at.