Monet Water Lilies

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Claude Monet, a 19th century French Impressionist, devoted the last 30 years of his life on a series entitled “Water Lilies”. This series consists of approximately 250 individual oil paintings portraying Monet’s flower garden at Giverny. The Saint Louis Art Museum is home to one of these very unique paintings. Water Lilies is a very interesting piece because there is not just one painting, this series is on display at museums across the word; including the Musee Marmottan Monet in Paris, the Metropolitian Museum of Art in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri, the Carnege Museum of Art, the National Museum of Wales, the Musee des Beaux-Arts de Nantes and the Portland Art Museum. Monet painted the majority of the series of Water Lilies while he was suffering from cataracts. Cataracts starts out as the clouding of vision, then slowly takes over the eye causing complete vision loss. Back then there was nothing that could be done to stop that progression, but Monet continued to paint. Monet used oil on canvas through out the entire Water Lilies series. Using oil paint takes more time to dry than other paints, so the oils offer more time for the artist to adjust the painting or correct imperfections in the piece. If you look closely at Water Lilies, you can see some of the spots where Monet went back and corrected mistakes in the paint. For instance, on the red flower in the top left corner of the painting. Oil paints also offer a wide range of colors and rich color depth because they can be layered and mixed more easily than other paints. This is very evident in Water Lilies - because through out the whole painting - you can see that many of the colors are mixed with either a different shade of the same color, or a different color entirely. The consistency of oil paint is also very beneficial

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