Which artist created the 'Water Lilies' series?

Claude Monet created the “Water Lilies” series. The French Impressionist painted roughly 250 oil works showing the lily pond and garden at his home in Giverny, making the subject the central focus of his art during the final 31 years of his life.

Monet began concentrating on water lilies in 1899, often including his Japanese-style bridge, reflections, trees, and changing light. Rather than treating the pond as a single fixed view, he repeatedly returned to it at different times and under different conditions. This approach helped push his late work toward increasingly abstract compositions.

The series includes both relatively small easel paintings and enormous decorative panels. In the 1920s, France built two oval rooms at Paris’s Musée de l’Orangerie to house eight large murals; the installation opened in 1927, a few months after Monet’s death.

A common mix-up is treating “Water Lilies” as the title of one painting. It is a broad series, also known by the French title “Nymphéas,” and individual versions are held by museums including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Musée d’Orsay, and the Museum of Modern Art. Monet painted many of these works while suffering from cataracts.