Nymphéas (early Water Lilies)

The pond before the paintings

In April 1883 Claude Monet moved to the village of Giverny, about forty miles northwest of Paris, with his future wife Alice Hoschede and their combined eight children. Giverny was then a farming community of about three hundred people. The family rented a large pink stucco house called Le Pressoir on two acres, and when the property came up for sale in 1890 Monet bought it, writing to his dealer that he was certain of never finding a better situation or more beautiful countryside. It was his home for the rest of his life.

Early in 1893, with income from his paintings rising, Monet bought an adjacent plot between the railroad tracks and the little river Ru and applied for permission to divert water into a pond for aquatic plants. Local farmers objected, worried that his exotic plants would poison the water and kill their cattle. Permission came anyway, and by that autumn he had turned nearly a thousand square meters into a lily pond crossed by a wooden footbridge. He ordered hybrid water lilies from a specialist nursery in southwestern France, choosing them, he said, to his heart's content. 'Everything I have earned has gone into these gardens,' he later said.

For years he hardly painted the pond. Between 1893 and 1897 he made only three views of the water garden, looking across toward the bridge. Then, in his own words: 'It took me a long time to understand my water lilies... And then all at once, I had the revelation, how wonderful my pond was, and reached for my palette. I've hardly had any other subject since that moment.'

The first eight

This Nympheas belongs to that first campaign of about 1897 to 1899, a small series of eight paintings now numbered 1501 to 1508 in Daniel Wildenstein's catalogue of Monet's work. Four of the eight are in museums: the Musee Marmottan Monet in Paris, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Kagoshima City Museum of Art in Japan and the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna in Rome. This one is no. 1505.

In August 1897 the journalist Maurice Guillemot visited Giverny and was shown the pond, which he described as an immobile mirror on which floated water lilies with 'disquieting flowers of a strange exoticism.' These, he wrote, were the models for a decoration Monet had already begun to paint, in large panels he saw afterward in the studio. Monet described to him a circular room lined with paintings of water and flowers, an idea that came to fruition decades later in his mural-sized Grandes Decorations. The sale catalogue suggests this canvas may have been among those Guillemot saw.

The eight canvases differ in format, size, color and handling. This one has the most unified palette of the group: blues, violets and indigos for the still water, deeper greens and turquoises for the pads, and two luminous white blossoms as counterpoint. It also introduces the move that would define every later phase of the water lilies: there is no horizon and no perspectival viewpoint. The viewer is placed in the middle of the pond with nothing but water, light and reflection.

Monet then stepped back. In 1899 and 1900 he painted a sequence of eighteen views of the Japanese footbridge in conventional perspective, and he did not return to the open surface of the water until 1904, after which it became almost his only subject.

Hokusai and the flat plane

The cropped, flattened view of the pond also reflects Monet's interest in Japanese prints, especially Katsushika Hokusai's woodblock prints of flowers, several of which he owned. In 1896 he wrote to a dealer thanking him for thinking of him for 'the Hokusai flowers' and noting that he already had the iris, the chrysanthemums, the peonies and the convolvulus, and wanted the poppies.

That same year, 1897, he had painted a group of twenty-one canvases of the Seine at dawn, Matinee sur la Seine, fusing land, water and sky in soft light. The sale catalogue reads those river views as a step toward lowering his gaze to the surface of the pond.

From Michel Monet to Hong Kong

The painting passed from the artist to his son Michel Monet at Giverny, then by descent to a private collection in France, and from that family to the owner who sold it in 2024. It was exhibited in Basel in 1949, where it was titled 'zwei seerosen' (two water lilies); in Zurich and The Hague in 1952; and in Edinburgh in 1957, where it was misdated to about 1905, before that show traveled to London. More recently it was on long-term loan to a museum in Portland from June 2015 to January 2021, and to the Speed Art Museum in Louisville from February 2022 to August 2024.

In August 2024 it was announced as the headline lot of the first evening sale at a new Asia-Pacific auction headquarters in The Henderson, a tower in Central Hong Kong designed by Zaha Hadid Architects, with an estimate of HK$200 million to HK$280 million. The new headquarters opened to the public on September 20, and 12,840 visitors came to the preview.

On September 26, 2024, the painting hammered at HK$180 million, about $23 million, below its low estimate. With fees it sold for HK$233,375,000, reported as about US$30.1 million, the second-highest price of the sale series after a van Gogh. The result set a new auction record in Asia for Monet. The buyer has not been publicly named.

The numbers

Medium

Oil on canvas

Dimensions

73.3 x 101 cm (28 7/8 x 39 3/4 in)

Catalogue raisonne

Wildenstein no. 1505 (1985, vol. IV; 1996, vol. III)

Signature

Stamped 'Claude Monet' (Lugt 1819b) lower right and again on the reverse

Current owner

Private; the 2024 buyer has not been publicly named

Timeline

1. 1840

   Claude Monet is born.

2. Apr 1883

   Monet moves to Giverny and rents the house called Le Pressoir.

3. 1890

   Monet buys the Giverny property.

4. 1893

   Monet acquires the neighboring plot and digs his water-lily pond; it is in place by autumn.

5. Aug 1897

   Journalist Maurice Guillemot sees the pond and Monet's first water-lily panels in the studio.

6. 1897

   Monet begins the first water-lily series of eight canvases, including this one, completed by about 1899.

7. 1899

   Monet turns to a series of eighteen views of the Japanese footbridge, painted in 1899-1900.

8. 1901

   Monet applies to enlarge the pond again, diverting a tributary of the Epte to triple its size.

9. 1926

   Monet dies; the painting passes to his son Michel.

10. Sep 1949

    The painting is exhibited in Basel under the title 'zwei seerosen.'

11. May 1952

    It is shown in Zurich, then in The Hague that summer.

12. Aug 1957

    It is shown in Edinburgh, misdated to about 1905, and then in London.

13. 1985

    Wildenstein's catalogue raisonne lists it as no. 1505.

14. Jun 2015

    It begins a long-term loan to a museum in Portland, through January 2021.

15. Feb 2022

    It goes on long-term loan to the Speed Art Museum in Louisville, through August 2024.

16. Aug 22, 2024

    It is announced as the headline lot of the first evening sale at The Henderson in Hong Kong.

17. Sep 26, 2024

    It sells for HK$233,375,000, about $30.1 million, in its first appearance at auction.

The world in 1897

• Apr 19, 1897

  The first Boston Marathon is run, with fifteen men competing.

• Apr 30, 1897

  J. J. Thomson announces the discovery of the electron in London.

• May 26, 1897

  Bram Stoker's Dracula is published in London.

• Jun 22, 1897

  The British Empire celebrates Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee.

• Jul 17, 1897

  The Klondike Gold Rush begins as the first successful prospectors reach Seattle.

• Jan 13, 1898

  Emile Zola's open letter J'Accuse...! on the Dreyfus affair appears on the front page of a Paris daily.

• Feb 15, 1898

  The USS Maine explodes and sinks in Havana Harbor, precipitating the Spanish-American War.

• Aug 18, 1898

  The radioactive element polonium is discovered by Marie and Pierre Curie.

Price record

A realized auction price is what a buyer actually paid on the date shown, including the buyer's premium where the sale reported it. It is the strongest kind of reference price, and it is a record of one sale of one object on one day, not a promise of what the next example will bring.

By reference price, Nymphéas (early Water Lilies) is number 19 of 100 in the art entries of the FLOAT 100. 88 of those 100 rest on a realized sale; the rest carry an asking price or a guide value, and each page says which. Rank within the FLOAT 100 itself (19 here) is editorial: how much an object defines its field, not price alone.

Did you know

• When Monet applied to divert river water for his pond, local farmers objected that his exotic water plants would poison the water and kill their cattle.
• Monet painted only three views of his water garden in the four years after he dug the pond; the water lilies themselves came later.
• At a 1949 exhibition in Basel the painting was simply titled 'zwei seerosen,' German for 'two water lilies,' after its two white blossoms.
• An exhibition in Edinburgh in 1957 dated the painting to about 1905, wrong by several years.
• Before its sale, the painting spent most of the previous decade on long-term loan to American museums, in Portland and then in Louisville.
• Monet collected Hokusai's flower prints and in 1896 told a dealer the poppies were the one he still needed.