À propos de l’œuvre
Nymphéas, par Claude Monet
Claude Monet · 1903 · Artizon Museum · W1658
Water Lilies W1658hand painted reproduction
Turquoise blue water covers the entire field, crossed by green reflections and leaves with purple contours. A few white and pink flowers are enough to direct the eye. This 1903 painting kept by the Ishibashi Foundation at the Artizon Museum corresponds to Wildenstein 1658.
Look at the work
A turquoise surface shared between floating leaves and vertical reflections
Water lilies are concentrated mainly on the right and in the lower half, leaving a wide opening of clear water on the left. This asymmetry avoids any regular decorative motif and gives the impression of a fragment taken from a much larger pool.
Green vertical touches suggest reflected trees, while leaves are laid in large horizontal ovals. Pink and white flowers introduce rare hot spots into a whole dominated by blue and green.
In W1658, water is not a bottom: it brings together the sky, reflected plants and floating plants on the same moving plane.
Composition, touch and light
What Monet builds behind the impression of snapshot
Three precise elements allow us to understand this composition and the essential difficulties of faithful reproduction.
The Artizon Museum version
The institution documents an oil on canvas from 1903 measuring 81.5 × 100.5 cm. The catalog raisonné identifies it under the number Wildenstein 1658.
After water garden expansion
Monet enlarged his pond in 1901 and 1902. He was then able to eliminate the bridge and bank to paint only the surface, its plants and the reflections changing according to the light.
To the Water Landscapes exhibition
This research leads to the set of forty-eight Water Lilies presented by Durand-Ruel in 1909. The paintings function as successive fragments of the same continuous space.
Reference image
Read this specific version
Only one image is used: the exact view of W1658 from the Artizon Museum, preserved as a real WebP of 2,200 × 1,646 px without artificial enlargement.
A deliberately asymmetrical composition
The large light area on the left balances the accumulated leaves on the right. We must preserve this relative emptiness, essential to the breathing of the painting.
Turquoise, willow green and purple
The blues of the water remain luminous, while the vertical greens deepen the reflections. The purple borders around the leaves prevent the shapes from blending together.
Two key directions
The reflections descend in vertical lines; the leaves spread horizontally. Reproduction must maintain this opposition, which makes the surface of the water perceptible.
Documented benchmarks
Three pieces of information specific to this work
The Artizon Museum preserves this 1903 painting measuring 81.5 × 100.5 cm; it corresponds to Wildenstein number 1658.
The Water Lilies, Wildenstein 1658
The horizontal format, turquoise water and precise distribution of flowers identify this version among Monet's many water landscapes.
Artizon Museum, Ishibashi Foundation
The painting belongs to the collection of the Ishibashi Foundation in Tokyo, formerly presented at the Bridgestone Museum of Art before the opening of the Artizon Museum.
The basin developed in Giverny
Monet paints here a nature that he himself organized. However, it erases any garden landmarks to transform water, flowers and reflections into an autonomous space.
Your reproduction
What the painter must preserve
Fidelity here depends on precise relationships between light, touch, depth and color temperature.
- The exact version of the Artizon Museum, Wildenstein 1658
- The original horizontal format of 81.5 × 100.5 cm
- The large turquoise opening left on the left
- Vertical green reflections facing horizontal leaves
Work sheet
| Title | Water Lilies W1658 |
|---|---|
| Artist | Claude Monet (1840 -1926) |
| Date | 1903 |
| Original technique | Oil on canvas |
| Dimensions | 81.5 × 100.5 cm |
| Orientation | Horizontal |
| Conservation | Artizon Museum, Ishibashi Foundation, Tokyo, Japan |
| Inventory | Artizon Museum · Wildenstein 1658 |
| Your reproduction | Handmade oil painting on canvas |
Presentation in your interior
A palette designed with the room
This aquatic composition brings fresh light to a living room, bedroom or reading space. Blonde oak, off-white, gray blue and small powder pink accents naturally accompany its palette.
