In 1893 Claude Monet purchased a new plot of land adjacent to his home in Giverny, Normandy, for the sole purpose of creating a water garden. By enlarging his existing pond and filling it with exotic new water lilies, the artist went about building an environment he described as, ‘both for the pleasure of the eye and for the purpose of having subjects to paint'. Within the flourishing oasis, he built a humpback footbridge, inspired by the Japanese prints imported into France in the 1867 Paris International Exposition. The artist went on to paint over 250 canvases of his newly beloved subject throughout his later career, crowned by his grandes decorations, the vast circular installation works now hanging in the Musée de l'Orangerie, Paris.
In Les Nymphéas Roy Lichtenstein pays homage to Monet’s Water-Lilies. Using his signature Ben-day dots, strident colours, and graphic lines, the artist cleverly references the beacon of art history. Adopting the Impressionist device of cropping, Lichtenstein focuses on floating buds as they bloom above the waters surface. Juxtaposing dots with diagonal lines, interrupted by swathes of flat black and white colour, the artist achieves the impression of reflection and rippling to the water on his two-dimensional plane.
Using Monet as source, Lichtenstein suggests that the artwork of the 19th century master is as recognizable as any comic book character. Turning to the same subject at the same time in his life, Lichtenstein’s water lily series represents the culmination of the artists creative development, with the introduction of a wider tonal range into his last works.
'… I’d see something like a way of doing a Monet through just dots that would look like a machine-made impressionist painting.' —Roy Lichtenstein
1993 Linocut, woodcut, lithograph and screenprint in colours, on Arches Cover paper, with full margins. I. 66.7 x 91 cm (26 1/4 x 35 7/8 in.) S. 78.8 x 102.4 cm (31 x 40 3/8 in.) Signed, dated and numbered 19/100 in pencil (there were also 25 artist's proofs), co-published by the artist and Éditions de la Tempête, Paris, for the benefit of Médecins du Monde, framed.