Cleveland Art Museum

On my trip to Cleveland to visit old friends, we stopped by the Cleveland Art Museum, one of the great museums of the world.

Fairly recently, they did a major expansion, creating a massive atrium between the original building and a new wing:

This atrium ties the beautiful interior space with elegant outside gardens:

I was visiting with Bill and Jeanne, dear old friends of ours:

I wanted to seek out a painting fondly remembered from my youth:

Water Lilies, 1919-26 Oil on canvas Claude Monet (French, 1840-1926)

Monet spent the last 30 years of his life painting the lily pond at his home in Giverny, a small town on the Seine River, just north of Paris. This expansive composition focuses on the momentary effect of sunlight both penetrating and reflecting off the shimmering water. While reflections of passing clouds dance across the illusive watery surface, plant fronds sway underneath.

Around 1914, Monet conceived an ambitious plan called his Grande Décoration-of arranging a series of such paintings in a continuous panorama that would surround and enclose the viewer in an environment of pure color. The plan was realized in the 1920s with the installation of two such rooms at the Musée de l'Orangerie in Paris.

Cleveland's painting is the left panel of a three-part variation on the water lily theme. Its companions are at the St. Louis Art Museum and the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City.

See: Monet and Impressionism