Visitors to The San Diego Museum of Art will have the special opportunity to experience the beauty and power of French Impressionism with a special viewing of Claude Monet’s 1904 painting Le Bassin de Nympheas. During the last two decades of his life, Monet created approximately 250 studies of the lily pond in his garden at Giverny, at different times of the day and in various weather conditions. Often working outside, Monet applied broad brushstrokes to create surface texture and a remarkable sense of immediacy and light. This commitment to the motif demonstrated Monet’s never-ending desire to portray the constantly changing qualities of light and color in nature. The canvas will be on display in the Gluck Gallery on the second floor of the Museum, where it can be viewed alongside three Post-Impressionist works of art from The San Diego Museum of Art’s permanent collection.

I want the unobtainable. Other artists paint a bridge, a house, a boat, and that’s the end. They are finished. I want to paint the air which surrounds the bridge, the house, the boat, the beauty of the air in which these objects are located, and that is nothing short of impossible.” – Claude Monet


Support for the exhibition is provided by Rob and Lynne Hayes and the members of The San Diego Museum of Art and the County of San Diego Community Enhancement Program. Institutional support for the Museum is provided by the city of San Diego Commission for Arts and Culture.
Featured: Claude Monet, Waterlilies or The Water Lily Pond (Nymphéas), 1904. Denver Art Museum Collection: Funds from the Helen Dill bequest, 1935.14. Photography courtesy Denver Art Museum.