Monet painted grainstacks from 1888 to 1891, his first deliberate series. He would return to this episodic approach again and again with other subjects: poplar trees, the Rouen Cathedral, mornings on the Seine River, Houses of Parliament, and his garden at Giverny—the largest series by far, famously featuring the bridge and water lilies. Returning to the same scene, he could reveal variations—of light, weather, and seasons—and capture the ever-changing nature of nature.
Monet’s poplar series includes 24 paintings of trees on the bank of the Epte River near the village of Limetz, about a mile upstream from the artist’s home at Giverny. Shortly after Monet began work on the series, the trees were to be auctioned and harvested. After pleading with the mayor of Limetz to delay the sale, to no avail, he resorted to purchasing the trees in partnership with a local wood merchant, who agreed to leave them standing for several more months.
Following the poplar series, Monet created more than 30 canvases of the Rouen Cathedral, exploring the changing color and light on the building’s portal. He painted these in the late winter of 1892-93 and then reworked them in his studio, from memory, the following year. As permanent as the façade appeared, he noted, the sun transformed it every day: "Everything changes, even stone.”
For his next series, Monet anchored his rowboat along the banks of the Epte River, where it flows into the Seine in Giverny. He worked from dawn to day, capturing the changing light, on one canvas after another. He even numbered the 18 canvases and stored them in grooves built into the boat so he could work on them, in order, morning after morning.
The London series spanned three subjects: Waterloo Bridge, Charing Cross Bridge, and the Houses of Parliament, which was the largest series within the series at over 100 canvases. Between 1899 and 1901, he made three separate trips to the city to paint, later writing, "…in London, what I love, above all, is the fog." Indeed, like the sun on the Rouen Cathedral, fog changed the stone of the bridges, softened the rough edges of the buildings, and played with the surface of the River Thames.
In 1893, Monet purchased property near Giverny "for the pleasure of the eye and also for motifs to paint," envisioning an Asian-influenced water garden filled with flowers, trees, and water lilies. He added a Japanese-style wooden footbridge in 1895, and a few years later began to paint the pond and its water lilies—with obsessive focus—until his death in 1926. He painted more than 250 canvases of his beloved garden.
Monet’s earliest images of the footbridge crisply depict the entire scene. Later works aren’t as rigid or formal, instead capturing the light, color, and feel of the environment—evidence of Monet’s declining eyesight. He painted what he saw.
In his first water-lily series (1897–99), Monet painted the pond with its water lilies, bridge, and trees neatly divided by a fixed horizon, similar to his early studies of the Japanese bridge. Over time, his canvases focused more on the lilies and the reflection on the water—he looked down instead of across the scene. Monet eventually abandoned the confines of the easel itself, painting massive compositions over many feet of canvas.