Most well-known today for his series of serene water lilies paintings, 19th-century Impressionist Claude Monet was a groundbreaking tour de force in the development of expressive art. Throughout his long life, which spanned the years between 1840 and 1926, Monet would progress from drawing amusing caricatures of friends to capturing the elusive nuances of natural scenes in various attitudes of light and color. Along with the other Impressionists, Monet's aim in his painting was to capture reality and analyse the ever-changing nature of light and color. He recorded his surrounding faithfully, from the grime of a Paris railway station to the incandescent beauty of his later paintings based on the gardens he created at Giverny in north-eastern France.

During his tutelage at the Gleyre studio, Claude Monet painted Woman in a Green Dress, a life-sized portrait of his future wife Camille, and Women in a Garden, for which Camille also modeled.

By the early 1880s, Monet and his artist friends, including Paul Cezanne, Camille Pissarro, Sisley and Edgar Degas, had become disillusioned with the restrictive standards of the dominant arts organization in Paris, L'Academie des Beaus-Arts, which selected the paintings to be included in the yearly Salons. In 1873, they joined other like-minded colleagues to form their own arts organization, "Societe Anonyme Coopérative des Artistes Peintres, Sculpteurs et Graveurs," or the Cooperative and Anonymous Association of Painters, Sculptors and Engravers. The group organized its first exhibit, which included the work of 30 artists, in the spring of 1874.

Monet opted to show his 1872 painting, Impression Sunrise, which proved to be a fateful decision. One of the art critics reviewing the exhibit coined the term Impressionism as a derisive jest after viewing "Impression Sunrise" and similarly rendered works on display, claiming that the paintings were amateurish and unfinished. The artists embraced the new title for their movement, and thereafter, identified themselves as Impressionists.

Once the movement had a name and a reputation, however dubious, Monet went on the create some of his most brilliant works of art, such as Madame Monet and Child, which he completed in 1875, a scene resplendent with and color and life.

Among the artist's works in the time following his loss is The Ice Drift Series, a group of a dozen paintings depicting the melting ice floes on the River Seine. Muted colors, mist-saturated settings, denuded trees and frozen landscapes reflect the starkness of the artist's vision as he immersed himself in mourning.

Claude Monet was becoming increasingly enamored with the insight that the same landscape underwent alterations at different times of day as the sunlight changed. He painted the same scene repeatedly to capture these nuances on canvas. This idea informed his "Ice Drift Series," his Haystack paintings of the mid-1880s and 1990s, and his stunning Poplars series of the 1890s.

In 1892 and 1893, the artist camped out in a rented room that overlooked the Rouen Cathedral to work on several canvases at once, each devoted to a different time of day, to create intensive studies of light and shadow.

During this middle period in his artistic development, Monet's artworks moved toward abstraction, although the subjects were still recognizable, for the most part. He experimented with paint to create not only more depth of color but also to add texture to the surface of the canvas. Known for his innovative brushwork, Claude Monet utilized his signature short strokes and unadulterated hues to encapsulate momentary glimpses of the effect of light on perspective.

Monet set to work to create a private haven where he would produce some of his most well-loved works over the final decades of his life. Flower gardens and a lily pond with a picturesque Japanese bridge provided the landscapes that the artist would paint over and over again as the century began. He would later state that the Giverny Gardens constituted his greatest work of art.

During his travels in the first decade of the 20th century, Claude Monet painted a series of the Houses of Parliament in the Palace of Westminster, which rises from the fog or towers over sun-gilded waters at sunset. During the same period, the artist produced several paintings in a study of Waterloo Bridge and the Thames in various attitudes of light and fog. He also visited the Mediterranean region and Madrid in the early 1900s

His chef d'oeuvre, however, was actually waiting for him in his own back yard where he produced his series of water lily pond paintings, which consists of approximately 300 canvases in total, 40 of them in large format. Claude Monet had painted his first renditions in the 1890s but produced the majority of the works during the final two decades of his life. The early paintings of his lily pond included the conventional spatial boundaries of water, surrounding land and horizon, but as he progressed through these works, such boundaries began to merge until finally, the boundless pond became the universe, its scope immeasurable and defined exclusively by light.

Just like William Shakespeare on literature, and Sigmund Freud on psychology, Claude Monet's impact on modern art is tremendous.

Monet was among the most influential artists of any era, and his unique color palette, vision and conformation would make a lasting impact on future art movements. Many artists have been influenced by Monet, whose techniques inspired Impressionists and Post-Impressionists such as Vincent van Gogh. In terms of form and scale, Monet's works directly influenced Neo-Impressionists such as Georges Seurat, and Abstract Expressionists including Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko. Popular artist Andy Warhol reflected the Monet influence in his multiple renditions of a single subject. Claude Monet also laid some of the groundwork for the Minimalist movement of the 1960s. Still extremely popular in his own right, Claude Monet continues to the present day to define both the public's appreciation of art and the perception of beauty in its purest form.

Frequently exhibited and successful during his lifetime, Monet's fame and popularity soared in the second half of the 20th century when he became one of the world's most famous painters and a source of inspiration for burgeoning groups of artists. By striving to translate his unique perception of the natural world directly to the canvas, Claude Monet was instrumental in forging an entirely new direction for the world of art.

Water Lilies (French: Nymphéas [nɛ̃.fe.a]) is a series of approximately 250 oil paintings by French Impressionist Claude Monet (1840–1926).

The paintings depict his flower garden at his home in Giverny, and were the main focus of his artistic production during the last thirty years of his life. Many of the works were painted while Monet suffered from cataracts.

Monet's long-standing preference for producing and exhibiting a series of paintings related by subject and perspective began in 1889, with at least ten paintings done at the Valley of the Creuse, which were shown at the Galerie Georges Petit. Among his other famous series are his Haystacks.

During the 1920s, the state of France built a pair of oval rooms at the Musée de l'Orangerie as a permanent home for eight water lily murals by Monet. The exhibit opened to the public on 16 May 1927, a few months after Monet's death.

Sixty water lily paintings from around the globe including this piece were assembled for a special exhibition at the Musée de l'Orangerie in 1999.

The paintings are on prominent display at museums all over the world, including the Musée Marmottan Monet, the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, the Tate, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Saint Louis Art Museum, the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri, the Carnegie Museum of Art, Princeton University Art Museum, the National Museum of Wales, the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nantes, The Toledo Museum of Art, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Portland Art Museum, and the Legion of Honor. In 2020, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston celebrated its 150th anniversary with some of Monet's Water Lilies paintings.

Monet painted the bigger works of his Water Lily series in a large studio at his home in Giverny, France

On 19 June 2007, one of Monet's Water Lily paintings sold at a Sotheby's auction in London. On 24 June 2008 another of his Water Lily paintings, Le Bassin Aux Nymphéas, sold at Christie's in London, almost double the estimate.

In May 2010, it was announced that the 1906 Nymphéas work would be auctioned in London in June 2010. Giovanna Bertazzoni, Christie's auction house director and head of impressionist and modern art, said, "Claude Monet's water-lily paintings are amongst the most recognised and celebrated works of the 20th Century and were hugely influential to many of the following generations of artists."

On 6 May 2014, one of the Water Lilies, Le Bassin aux Nymphéas, was auctioned at Christie's, New York City

In June 2014, one of the Water Lilies, Nymphéas, sold at a Sotheby's auction in London. This piece was auctioned to an anonymous buyer, but the piece went on to be part of the exhibition "Painting the Modern Garden: From Monet to Matisse" at the Cleveland Museum of Art and the Royal Academy of Arts, London, starting in 2015.

While many of Monet's masterpieces have sold, there are still an estimated 250 oil paintings from this series. The collection is widely popular, with many of these pieces residing in exhibits. The paintings have been catalogued by Daniel Wildenstein in his Monet: Catalogue Raisonné.

During the period from his late teens to early 20s, Claude Monet spent time in the Louvre in Paris, where he met contemporary painters, such as Edouard Manet, who would later become colleagues. While other artists sought to improve their techniques by copying the masterworks on display

Claude Monet after a military tour returned to Paris to join the private studio of Charles Gleyre, a painter of historical art. He shared studio space with Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Frederique Bazille and Alfred Sisley, all of whom would later determine the future direction of art. The students would often take their easels and paints to outdoor settings and transfer their immediate impressions of the landscape onto the canvas with short, deft strokes.