Water Lilies (Nympheas Cycle)
1926 · Musee de l'Orangerie, Paris
Monet painted these eight murals of his pond for two oval rooms in Paris while his eyesight failed. They opened months after he died.
★ 9.5
The Art canon
Sourced and hung.
Every work chosen by hand and annotated for why it matters.
Browse all 704 works or filter by movement, subject, place, and artist.
Browse all 704 works or filter by movement, subject, place, and artist.
A Bar at the Folies-Bergere
1882 · Courtauld Gallery, London
Manet worked from a real barmaid named Suzon and put her reflection in the wrong place, which people have been arguing about ever since.
★ 9.1
Luncheon of the Boating Party
1881 · Phillips Collection, Washington, District of Columbia
Fourteen of Renoir's friends linger over the wreckage of lunch above the Seine, his future wife among them, cooing at a dog on the table.
★ 8.8
Impression, Sunrise
1872 · Musee Marmottan Monet, Paris
A critic seized on the word in the title to mock the whole group, and the insult ended up naming the movement.
★ 8.6
Bal du Moulin de la Galette
1876 · Musee d'Orsay, Paris
Sunlight comes through the trees in patches over a Montmartre dance floor, a big ambitious canvas given over entirely to a Sunday afternoon.
★ 8.5
Paris Street; Rainy Day
1877 · Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago
Umbrellas cross the wet cobbles of Haussmann's new boulevards, composed with a photographic exactness his Impressionist friends had no use for.
★ 7.6
Bridge over a Pond of Water Lilies
1899 · Museum of Modern Art, New York City
Monet dug the pond himself at Giverny, built the Japanese bridge over it, and then painted the place for the rest of his life.
★ 7.4
Bain a la Grenouillere
1869 · Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City
Monet and Renoir set up side by side at this riverside resort and worked out the quick broken stroke that became Impressionism.
★ 7.3
The Magpie
1869 · Musee d'Orsay, Paris
A single magpie on a gate in deep snow, the shadows tinged blue and violet rather than grey. The Salon turned it down.
★ 7.3
Wheatstacks (End of Summer)
1891 · Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago
Monet painted the same stacks near his house at every hour and season, so that what changes from canvas to canvas is only the light.
★ 7.3
L'Absinthe
1876 · Musee d'Orsay, Paris
Two people sit shoulder to shoulder at a cafe table staring at nothing, pushed off to one side behind a run of empty tables.
★ 7.3
The Child's Bath
1893 · Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago
A woman washes a child's feet in a basin, seen from above, the wallpaper and rug pushing everything flat as a Japanese print.
★ 7.2
Two Sisters (On the Terrace)
1881 · Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago
A basket of colored wool sits in the front, the Seine glitters behind, and the whole thing is about how good an afternoon can be.
★ 7.2
Gare Saint Lazare
1877 · Musee d'Orsay, Paris
Monet set his easel up inside the station and painted the steam until the roof and the city beyond it had dissolved into it.
★ 7.1
The Boulevard Montmartre at Night
1897 · National Gallery, London
Pissarro painted these boulevards from a hotel window over and over, but only once after dark, the gaslight smeared across wet pavement.
★ 6.9
The Boating Party
1894 · National Gallery of Art, Washington, District of Columbia
A dark-suited oarsman fills the foreground with his back while the water rises behind with no horizon, a design taken from Japanese prints.
★ 6.7
White Frost
1873 · Musee d'Orsay, Paris
Critics at the first Impressionist show in 1874 said it looked like palette scrapings. The furrows are streaked with blue, violet and gold.
★ 6.6
Garden at Sainte-Adresse
1867 · Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City
Monet's own father sits among the gladioli on a terrace, and the young painter tips the space up in flat bands like a Japanese print.
★ 6.6
The Cliff Walk at Pourville
1882 · Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago
Two women with parasols on a clifftop in Normandy, the grass and their dresses going the same direction as the wind.
★ 6.6
The Houses of Parliament, Sunset
1903 · National Gallery of Art, Washington, District of Columbia
Monet painted Westminster across the river again and again because what he actually wanted was the fog, not the building.
★ 6.6