Musée de l’Orangerie · 1920
Water Lilies: Setting Sun
Claude Monet
Monet closes the first oval room with the most dramatic light in the whole cycle — warm gold and violet replace the cooler blues and greens of the other panels, turning the pond into something closer to fire than water.
Why it matters
Monet closes the first oval room with the most dramatic light in the whole cycle — warm gold and violet replace the cooler blues and greens of the other panels, turning the pond into something closer to fire than water.
Look closer
Find the tall, golden-yellow grasses silhouetted at the lower left, the closest thing to a solid foreground shape anywhere in the cycle, then follow the warm colour as it bleeds across the water toward the darker, cooler tones on the right — dusk moving across the whole canvas in one continuous gradient.
This panel ends the sequence Monet designed to move the visitor through a full day, from the pale morning light of Room 1's other panels to this final blaze of dusk — a structure only fully visible by walking the room as he intended, not by viewing any single canvas in isolation.
Value context
ELYIO places this work in an indicative editorial context of €23–41.4 million.
The museum work is not for sale. This is ELYIO indicative context—not an appraisal, insurance value or offer.