The Japanese Bridge (The Water-Lily Pond) Claude Oscar Monet (1840-1926)

Description of Claude Monet’s painting The Japanese Bridge (Water Lily Pond)

The French artist Claude Monet was very fond of painting a pond with water lilies, located in his own garden in the locality of Giverny. He painted this pond at different times, from different angles and in different lights. Sometimes he had to work in parallel on several images of his pond, as the sun was moving, everything was changing around him and the work he had started had to be left for the next one.

The painting depicts a small pond overgrown with water lilies, above which a graceful green Japanese-style bridge rises. The pond is framed by luxuriant vegetation - in the background there are a lot of trees, occupied by purple wisteria whips, on the sides the sedges stick out like sharp arrows, weeping willows move with their long branches and hairs. And, of course, on the mirror-like surface of the pond grows a lot of water lilies.

Monet painted the canvas with broad and rough brush strokes that create the effect of movement - as if we are watching a real landscape with a pond, where a light breeze ruffles the greenery and wrinkles perfectly smooth water surface. The artist did not mix the colors on the palette, doing it directly on the canvas.

To fully convey the colors of the landscape Monet used a large number of shades of green and blue, flowing smoothly into each other. The lily petals are not just white - you can see glimpses of pink, blue and purple. Thanks to the strokes of yellow tones, the canvas is literally illuminated from within by bright sunlight.

Japanese bridge on the background of all this bright and vibrant nature does not look a foreign element. The smoothness of the pond is reflected on its bottom by blue-green reflections. The sun’s rays penetrate through the density and lushness of the trees in the upper right corner of the painting, intensifying the impression of an airy and dynamic landscape.