Musée de l’Orangerie · 1920
Water Lilies: Clear Morning with Willows
Claude Monet
In this second room, Monet introduces something absent from the first: solid, dark willow trunks anchoring each side of the canvas, so for the first time in the cycle something other than water actually breaks the surface of the picture.
Why it matters
In this second room, Monet introduces something absent from the first: solid, dark willow trunks anchoring each side of the canvas, so for the first time in the cycle something other than water actually breaks the surface of the picture.
Look closer
Follow the thin, trailing willow branches as they hang down from the top of the canvas, brushing the pale, hazy water below almost like a curtain; then find the handful of pale lily pads gathered at the lower left, small and quiet compared to the willows' scale.
This panel and its neighbours in the second oval room were designed to contrast deliberately with the first — where Monet lets the visitor look straight down onto open water, here the view is broken up and framed by growth at the water's edge, as if you had walked around to the far side of the pond.
Value context
ELYIO places this work in an indicative editorial context of €18.4–35 million.
The museum work is not for sale. This is ELYIO indicative context—not an appraisal, insurance value or offer.