Which French painter is known for his series of water lilies?

Claude Monet is the French painter known for his series of Water Lilies paintings. The series depicts the pond and garden at his home in Giverny, where floating flowers, reflections, changing light, and the surface of the water became subjects in their own right.

Monet began painting the water lilies around 1899 and returned to them repeatedly for more than two decades. He ultimately produced approximately 250 oil paintings in the series. Early works often include the Japanese bridge at Giverny, while later compositions increasingly eliminate the horizon and conventional sense of depth.

The paintings show Monet's Impressionist interest in fleeting light, but the late works also move toward abstraction. His deteriorating eyesight, including cataracts, affected some of the later color and visual effects. The series became the central focus of his artistic production during the last 31 years of his life.

In the 1920s, France installed eight large Water Lilies murals in the Musée de l'Orangerie's oval rooms in Paris. The museum opened them to the public in 1927, a few months after Monet's death. Water Lilies is often confused with Monet's separate Haystacks and Rouen Cathedral series.