Claude Monet
water lilies, setting sun
1915-26
Condition
When France emerged victorious from the First World War in 1918, Claude Monet was a septuagenarian artist, respected for his work
but considered by many as
me a man of the past: after the
revolution of Cu bism, the Impression-
ism that turned the world upside down
art forty years earlier already does
part of the story. However, despite
his advanced age, Monet wants to take
share in the news celebrant, at his
way, victory hairy ones.
Through his friend Georges Clémen-
this water, he proposes to offer to the French State an en-
seems of works that occupy it for three years
already and which he calls his "Great decorations".
These huge canvases - some, attached to juxtaposed panels, measure up to 17 meters wide - represent the water lilies in its ponds from Giverny to
different times of the day. Works at the limit of abstraction , which prove that the vigor and audacity of
old man are intact. The project accepted, the
painter imposes his conditions: he demands that his
works - then still running -
be exhibited according to his instructions. and his ideas
are as precise as they are complex to implement.
work. Monet indeed wishes to propose a
unprecedented experience for spectators by immersing them
literally standing in the middle of his canvases thanks to
an elliptical attachment device
that. It will be necessary not less than six
years of negotiations , of inter-
pathetic procrastination on the
choice of location, countless
plans reviewed by Monet himself
and from months of work to finalize
ment to transform the Orangerie des Tuileries into an exhibition space. Finally, in 1924, two large oval rooms bathed with overhead light are ready to welcome the twenty-two giant canvases. But Monet will retouch his Water Lilies until his death two years later, when they will be installed in their custom-made case. For the first time in history, a painter has made a scenographer of his own works, to immerse visitors, he said, "in the center of a flowery aquarium" .
the Water Lilies, green reflections
Camille Lefebvre,
Plan of the Musée de l'Orangerie , 1922
Orangery, room n°2 , 1926
What we can take away:
​
Even the best of ideas and the most stimulating of projects have little chance of generating support if they are presented at the wrong time, in the wrong place. To convince, federate and motivate, it is necessary to reflect on the most appropriate conditions for delivering our message, and to create a favorable context for the attention and receptivity of our interlocutors... Even if it takes time and effort.