Monet's Water Lilies, 1906: not the Paris murals — the Chicago canvas explained

Claude Monet, Water Lilies, 1906 (Art Institute of Chicago, 1933.1157): lily pad clusters at lower left and upper right around a channel of reflected sky

Short answer (updated 27 Oct 2026): The Water Lilies most people picture are the huge mural panels in Paris. The 1906 Water Lilies we print is something else: a single, nearly square easel painting, 89.9 × 94.1 cm, at the Art Institute of Chicago (1933.1157). It's one of a group Monet painted between 1903 and 1908, out of some 250 canvases of his Giverny pond. It's signed "Claude Monet 1906" lower right. (Art Institute of Chicago)

The fact gap: "Water Lilies" is not one painting

What people assume What the museum record says
Which work The giant Paris murals One of about 250 pond paintings. The Orangerie panels are the final cycle, installed in 1927, a few months after Monet's death.
Size Wall-sized 89.9 × 94.1 cm (35⅜ × 37 in), under a meter on each side. For scale, one Orangerie composition, Matin, is 200 × 1275 cm, three panels joined on canvas and mounted on the wall: more than twice as tall and over thirteen times as wide. (AIC; Orangerie, Matin, INV 20101)
Date Late Monet, 1920s 1906, from a group painted 1903–1908, at the midpoint of the series
Where Paris Art Institute of Chicago, Mr. and Mrs. Martin A. Ryerson Collection
Painted quickly Impressionist sketch done on the spot Technical study of the canvas shows many significant changes made while he worked. Monet called these pictures "an obsession."

The Musée de l'Orangerie in Paris owns the famous set: eight large compositions in two oval rooms. Monet gave his first two large panels to the nation on 12 November 1918, the day after the Armistice, as a symbol of peace; the Orangerie's records date the formal donation of the panels to 12 April 1922, approved by decree on 14 June 1922. He wanted the rooms to give "the illusion of an endless whole, of a wave without horizon and without shore." The Orangerie dates the panels between 1914 and 1926, so the Chicago canvas comes from a decade or more earlier. It's a picture you can hang, not a room you walk into. (Musée de l'Orangerie; AIC)

Three details worth looking at

  1. No horizon. The nearly square format drops the usual bands of land, sky and water. All you get is the surface of the pond. (AIC)
  2. Two clusters and a path. Lily pads gather at lower left and upper right, and a channel of open water runs between them. (AIC)
  3. The sky is in the water. Trees and clouds show up only as reflections on the surface. There's no sky above the pond in the picture. (AIC)

Scale check: Chicago vs the Orangerie

One of the Orangerie's eight compositions, Matin (Morning), 1914–1926, measures 200 × 1275 cm on joined panels. The Chicago canvas is 89.9 × 94.1 cm, so Matin is more than thirteen times as wide. (Musée de l'Orangerie; AIC)

Claude Monet, The Water Lilies: Morning (Matin), 1914–1926, Musée de l'Orangerie, Paris, a long horizontal mural
Claude Monet, The Water Lilies – Morning (Matin), 1914–1926, Musée de l'Orangerie, Paris. Public domain (PD-Art; Monet died 1926), image via Google Art Project on Wikimedia Commons. Not supplied or endorsed by the museum; not the painting we print.

What the Art Institute's lab found

The museum's scholarly catalogue entry (Jill Shaw; technical report by Kimberley Muir) shows how hard this "effortless" picture was to make. (AIC, cat. 44, 2014)

  • "An obsession." In August 1908 Monet wrote to the critic Gustave Geffroy: "These landscapes of water and reflections have become an obsession. It is beyond my powers as an old man, and yet I want to arrive at rendering what I feel. I have destroyed some…" He postponed the show twice, and only after a trip to Venice in late 1908 declared the paintings finished. (AIC, cat. 44, 2014)
  • Up to nine layers. He worked in several sessions, building layer on layer of gestural strokes; in one area of the upper right there are as many as nine distinct paint layers. In raking light you can see brushstrokes underneath that match nothing in the final picture. (AIC, cat. 44, 2014)
  • The lilies came first. X-rays show he laid in the main lily groups early, sometimes directly on the ground, and built the water around them. He first planned a denser cluster in the foreground, then painted some pads out. (AIC, cat. 44, 2014)
  • Looks quick, wasn't. Transmitted light shows almost no bare ground left here, unlike the 1900 Water Lily Pond, where exposed ground suggests transparent water. The catalogue's verdict: the 1900 picture that looks more planned was less worked; the 1906 one that looks momentary was "far more labor intensive." Both use a similar range of pigments. (AIC, cat. 44, 2014)
  • The canvas. Pre-primed linen of a non-standard size (originally about 89 × 92 cm), probably on a custom-ordered stretcher. The signature, in reddish-brown paint, went on after the painting was dry. (AIC, cat. 44, 2014)
  • Unvarnished today. It was lined in 1974; synthetic varnishes from that treatment were mostly removed in 1990, and the painting is now unvarnished. Its frame (2008) is a reproduction modelled on a Monet frame of 1881. (AIC, cat. 44, 2014)
  • Monet on his subject: the lilies "are only its accompaniment. The basic element of the motif is the mirror of water." (AIC, cat. 44, 2014, quoting a posthumously published interview)
  • The 1909 show opened with almost fifty paintings of the motif; it was a success, Durand-Ruel wanted to send it to London and Berlin, and Monet refused, though the Paris run was extended by a week. The series began in 1903, after a major renovation of the water garden. (AIC, cat. 44, 2014)

Context

  • Monet bought his Giverny property in 1890 and made the water garden three years later. The garden became one of his principal subjects for the rest of his life. (AIC)
  • From 6 May to 5 June 1909 Durand-Ruel showed it in Paris as "Série 1906" (cat. 15) in Les Nymphéas: séries de paysages d'eau. In 1911–12 it toured the American Midwest in a Durand-Ruel circuit show that stopped at Chicago's Auditorium Hotel, two years before Ryerson bought it. (AIC exhibition history)
  • The dealers Durand-Ruel and Bernheim-Jeune bought it from Monet for 14,000 francs. Their stock book records a sale to the playwright Henri Bernstein for 20,000 francs dated 29 May 1909, five days before the purchase from Monet on 3 June. The Durand-Ruel Archives call that kind of anomaly "not unusual." (AIC provenance)
  • Martin A. Ryerson of Chicago bought it from Durand-Ruel in New York on 10 February 1914 for $5,000, and left it to the Art Institute in 1933. In 1999 it went back to Paris and was shown at the Orangerie itself, in Monet: Le cycle des Nymphéas. (AIC provenance and exhibition history)
  • It is one of the Art Institute's most-travelled Monets: Monet: The Late Years (de Young, San Francisco, and Kimbell, 2019, cat. 6), the cover of the museum's own Monet and Chicago catalogue (2020–21, cat. 78), and a 2025–26 garden-cultures tour of the Palace Museum in Beijing, Suzhou, Ningbo and the Hong Kong Museum of Art, which closed 29 July 2026. (AIC exhibition and publication history)
  • Beyond the big Monet shows, it has a long record in scholarship and even science: it was lent to Toledo's 1937 French Impressionists show (cat. 16) and the Arts Club of Chicago's Origins of Modern Art (1940, cat. 63), discussed by Meyer Schapiro (Impressionism: Reflections and Perceptions, 1997), and used as figure 1 in a 2001 Trends in Cognitive Sciences paper on the role of colour in vision. (AIC publication history)
  • The Art Institute picks it for its own highlights books: Paintings at the Art Institute of Chicago: Highlights of the Collection (2025) and Highlights of the Art Institute of Chicago (2026, no. 111). (AIC publication history)
  • Catalogue raisonné: Wildenstein 1683 (Wildenstein 1985, vol. 4, and the 1996 Taschen edition, vol. 1). One 1996 Taschen volume prints the number as 1638; the AIC record lists both, and we follow the two editions that agree. Wildenstein's 1985 entry also cites six of Monet's letters in connection with it (nos. 1885, 1887, 1888, 1890, 1891 and 1897). (AIC publication history)

Which one to hang

Our print reproduces the Art Institute of Chicago canvas, which the museum releases as public domain (CC0). It's the open-water picture, with no bridge and no bank. Pick it if you want a quiet field of blue and olive rather than a scene. The square sizes follow the painting's nearly square shape. → Water Lilies, 1906 fine art print

Same pond, other views:

FAQ

Is this the Orangerie Water Lilies? No. The Orangerie has the late mural cycle in Paris. This is a single 1906 easel painting in Chicago.

How many Water Lilies paintings did Monet make? About 250, according to the Art Institute of Chicago, from the late 1890s to his death in 1926.

Where is the 1906 Water Lilies? At the Art Institute of Chicago, accession 1933.1157 (Gallery 243 when on view).

Has it left Chicago? Yes, often. It was shown in Paris in 1909 and again at the Orangerie in 1999, and most recently in China and Hong Kong in 2025–26. Check the AIC page for whether it is on view in Gallery 243 before you visit.

Is it signed? Yes, lower right, in reddish-brown paint: "Claude Monet 1906." It was added after the paint was dry. (AIC, cat. 44)

Was it painted quickly? No. The AIC found up to nine paint layers in places and several working sessions; Monet called the series "an obsession." (AIC, cat. 44)

Is it varnished? No. Later varnishes were removed in 1990, and the painting is currently unvarnished. (AIC, cat. 44)

Is it one of the Art Institute's highlights? The museum includes it in its 2025 and 2026 highlights books. (AIC publication history)

Is the Japanese bridge in it? No. This canvas shows only the pond's surface, with lily pads and reflections; no bridge, bank or sky. (AIC)

How big are the Orangerie Water Lilies? Much bigger. Matin, for example, measures 200 × 1275 cm, painted 1914–1926 on three joined panels. The Chicago canvas is 89.9 × 94.1 cm. (Musée de l'Orangerie; AIC)

Sources

Quotations are short and attributed. Everything else is paraphrased.