13 May 2017 / leggypeggy

Monet’s water lilies on show in Paris

exhibition, impressionist, Monet, Orangerie, paintings, Paris

Monet's Water Lilies

The Orangerie des Tuileries in Paris seems destined to spend its life housing plants in one form or another. It started life in 1852 when it was first built to provide shelter for the orange trees that lined the garden of Tuileries Palace.

The trees mustn’t have lasted long in Parisian winters, because the Orangerie got side-tracked for several decades, serving different functions (such as an exam hall, exhibition hall and concert hall). Then in 1920 it was chosen to house a completely different type of plant—large painted panels known as Nyphméas or Water Lilies by French impressionist Claude Monet.

Over the last 30 years of his life, Monet focused on painting the water lilies in the flower garden at his home in Giverny. About 250 of his paintings feature these flowers (many were painted when Monet had cataracts),

But the Orangerie paintings were done especially for that location. They were considered such an important contribution to the setting that Camille Lefèvre, the architect in charge of the renovation, followed Monet’s instructions to the word when designing the two elliptical rooms that house the masterpieces to this day.

Monet, water lilies

Lefèvre then designed the rest of the building to be an exhibition hall. I’ll write about that soon and share some of the images that are included in what is now known as the Walter–Guillaume collection.

But for now I’ll share some of the pics (including some close-ups of some panels) from the day we visited the water lilies. I haven’t added captions. We were lucky enough to go on the first Sunday of a month when many museums offer free admission.

P.S. Over the years I’ve seen many of Monet’s water lily paintings, but all of these were new to me.

P.P.S. I hope you like the Little Miss who features in many of my photos. She was taking in everything and seemed to pop up everywhere. I wonder if she’ll remember this day when she’s much older. Do you have childhood memories of seeing art exhibitions?