Which flower is the title subject of Monet's famous Water Lilies series?

The title subject of Claude Monet’s famous Water Lilies series is the water lily.

The series, also known by its French title Nymphéas, depicts the water-lily pond in Monet’s garden at Giverny, France. Rather than documenting one scene once, Monet repeatedly painted the pond, reflections, flowers, bridge, and changing light from different viewpoints and at different times of day.

Monet worked on water-lily pictures for roughly the last 31 years of his life. The series contains approximately 250 oil paintings, making it one of the largest and most sustained projects of his career. Many works reduce the visible horizon, allowing water, colour, and reflected sky to dominate the composition.

The title can cause confusion because Monet also painted irises, willows, bridges, and other garden features. Those elements appear in some canvases, but the defining subject is the water-lily pond and its floating flowers. In the 1920s, eight large water-lily murals were installed in Paris’s Musée de l’Orangerie.