It is no understatement to say that Claude Monet revolutionised the way we see and experience art. As a pioneer of the Impressionist movement, Monet had an unparalleled ability to capture fleeting moments of light, colour, and atmosphere, creating works that feel alive and immediate even today. His paintings are not only masterpieces of technique but also intimate reflections of his life, his surroundings, and his deeply personal connection to the natural and urban worlds.
In this blog post, we explore ten of Monet’s most remarkable works—ranging from tranquil gardens and vibrant landscapes to bustling city scenes. Some of these paintings are universally known, while others may offer new perspectives on his genius. Each one reveals a different facet of Monet’s talent, inviting us to step into the world as he saw it: rich, luminous, and endlessly inspiring.
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1. Water Lillies
Claude Monet’s Water Lilies series transcends the boundaries of art, embodying themes of tranquillity, resilience, and harmony. Above you can see two small studies from the larger works. Painted over the last three decades of his life, these works were inspired by the serene beauty of Monet’s garden in Giverny. The series culminated in a monumental achievement: an immersive environment of large-scale panels designed to envelop the viewer in nature’s quiet majesty.
Monet offered the Water Lilies to the French State on 12 November 1918, the day after the Armistice that ended World War I, as a profound symbol of peace. Installed in the Orangerie Museum in 1927, a few months after his death, the collection was hailed as the “Sistine Chapel of Impressionism” by André Masson in 1952. This unparalleled cycle crowns Monet’s work, representing one of the monumental artistic achievements in early 20th-century painting.
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2. The Magpie (1869)
Claude Monet’s The Magpie, completed during the winter of 1868–1869 near Étretat in Normandy, stands as a testament to his innovative approach to landscape painting. This serene scene features a solitary magpie perched on a wattle fence, set against a vast expanse of freshly fallen snow. Monet’s masterful depiction of light and shadow is evident in the delicate blue and violet tones that convey the crispness of the winter day.
During this period, France experienced several severe winters, notably in 1879–80 and 1890–91, which inspired many Impressionist artists to explore snowscapes. Monet himself produced approximately 140 such paintings, capturing the transient beauty of snowy landscapes. His contemporaries, including Alfred Sisley, Camille Pissarro, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Gustave Caillebotte, and Paul Gauguin, also ventured into this genre, each bringing their unique perspective to the interplay of light and snow.
Initially, The Magpie was met with scepticism and was rejected by the Paris Salon of 1869. However, it has since been recognised as one of Monet’s most significant early works, exemplifying his departure from traditional methods and his commitment to capturing natural light’s fleeting effects.
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Woman in the Garden, by Claude Monet
3. Woman in the Garden (1867)
Claude Monet’s Woman in the Garden (1867) offers a captivating look into his early artistic development. The painting portrays Jeanne-Marguerite Lecadre, the wife of Monet’s cousin, standing gracefully amidst the lush greenery of the Lecadre family’s garden in Sainte-Adresse. Her white attire contrasts vividly with the vibrant reds and pinks of the surrounding flora, highlighting Monet’s keen eye for colour harmony.
Executed en plein air, this work reflects Monet’s dedication to capturing natural light and atmosphere, a practice that would become a hallmark of Impressionism. The composition is meticulously structured, with Jeanne-Marguerite positioned alongside blooming rose bushes, creating a balanced and serene scene. Interestingly, X-ray analysis has revealed that Monet painted this masterpiece over a previous work.
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Poppy Fields Near Argenteuil, by Claude Monet
4. Poppy Fields Near Argenteuil (1873)
Painted in 1873, Poppy Field Near Argenteuil exemplifies Claude Monet’s ability to capture the joy and vitality of the natural world. The painting depicts a sprawling field of poppies near Monet’s home in Argenteuil, a picturesque town along the Seine River. In the foreground, a woman and a child, believed to be Monet’s wife Camille and their son Jean, stroll leisurely through the landscape.
The scene is alive with movement and light. Monet’s characteristic loose brushstrokes bring the swaying grass and blooming poppies to life, while the expansive blue sky above adds depth and openness to the composition. The vibrant red of the poppies punctuates the painting, drawing the viewer’s eye across the field and emphasising the beauty of summer’s bloom.
This painting is a perfect example of Impressionism’s focus on everyday life and the fleeting moments that make it extraordinary. Monet doesn’t idealise the landscape but instead captures its dynamic interplay of colour, light, and shadow as experienced in the moment. The figures of Camille and Jean are not overly detailed but blend seamlessly into the setting, emphasising their harmony with nature.
Poppy Field near Argenteuil is not only a celebration of the season but also a deeply personal work, offering a glimpse into Monet’s life with his family. Today, it remains one of his most beloved paintings, cherished for its warmth and vitality.
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5. Irises
Claude Monet’s irises held a special place in the artist’s heart. Lining the pathways of his beloved garden at Giverny, these vibrant blooms were a recurring motif in his work. During the First World War, Monet returned to the subject again and again, creating around thirty portraits of the flower. Each painting captures the irises’ striking beauty in shades of purple, blue, and yellow, revealing their many moods through subtle variations in light and composition.
This particular study of irises, with its intense blue tones and simple composition, draws the viewer into a dreamlike state. The blueness of the petals seems to spill across the canvas, dissolving boundaries between the flowers and their surroundings. The tall stems stand strong and proud, while the petals shimmer with a mystical energy.
The fascination with irises was not unique to Monet. The late 19th century saw a renewed appreciation for the flower, fuelled in part by the influence of Japanese art. Japanese depictions of irises introduced Western artists to a fresh perspective, celebrating the flower’s elegance and symbolic ambiguity. The iris, with its vertical stems and curvaceous petals, embodies both strength and delicacy. In Monet’s hands, this duality is celebrated, as the irises rise tall and independent, their vibrant hues illuminating the canvas.
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Water Lillies and Japanese Bridge, by Claude Monet
6. Water Lillies and Japanese Bridge (1899)
In 1883, Claude Monet moved to Giverny, where he began transforming the landscape into his most personal artistic inspiration. By 1893, he had expanded his property to include a water garden, diverting a local stream to create the iconic lily pond. This carefully designed environment became the subject of many works, including Water Lillies and Japanese Bridge, painted in 1899.
One of twelve paintings from a single vantage point, this piece captures the harmony of Monet’s garden, from the arching blue-green bridge to the lush greenery reflected in the water. The bridge’s placement just below the painting’s top edge creates an intimate, enclosed space, reminiscent of the hortus conclusus (enclosed garden) of medieval imagery. At the same time, its tranquil beauty and simplicity reveal the influence of Japanese art, a noted inspiration for Monet’s designs.
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7. Antibes (1888)
In the early spring of 1888, Claude Monet travelled to the French Riviera, seeking new landscapes to inspire his work. Settling in Antibes, he was captivated by the region’s radiant light and the vibrant interplay of sea, sky, and vegetation. This sojourn resulted in a series of paintings that capture the essence of the Mediterranean coast, with Antibes standing out as a particularly luminous example.
In Antibes, Monet depicts the fortified town bathed in sunlight, with the Alps faintly visible in the distance. The composition balances the warm tones of the town’s architecture against the cool blues of the sea and sky, creating a harmonious interplay of colour which is mediated only by the sleepy mountain range running across the centre of the composition. Monet’s brushwork conveys the gentle movement of the water and the shimmering quality of the light, encapsulating the serene atmosphere of the coastal landscape.
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Madame Monet and Her Son, by Claude Monet
8. Madame Monet and Her Son (1875)
Painted in 1875, Claude Monet’s Woman with a Parasol – Madame Monet and Her Son epitomises Impressionist art, capturing a transient moment of everyday life. The painting features Monet’s first wife, Camille, and their son, Jean, during a leisurely stroll on a windy summer’s day in Argenteuil, where the family resided from 1871 to 1877.
Monet’s composition places Camille centrally, her figure set against a backdrop of swirling clouds. She holds a green parasol that shields her face from the sun, while her veil and white dress billow in the breeze, conveying a sense of movement and spontaneity. Jean stands further back in the field, gazing towards his mother, his small figure partially obscured by the tall grass. The upward perspective, as if viewed from a low angle, enhances the monumentality of Camille’s figure and emphasises the expansiveness of the sky.
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Cliff Walk at Pourville, by Claude Monet
9. Cliff Walk at Pourville (1882)
In 1882, Claude Monet embarked on a painting expedition to the Normandy coast, seeking to capture the region’s natural beauty. During this period, he created Cliff Walk at Pourville, a vibrant portrayal of two women strolling along the cliffs overlooking the sea near the fishing village of Pourville.
The painting features two young women, believed to be Marthe and Blanche Hoschedé, the daughters of Alice Hoschedé, who would later become Monet’s second wife. Monet faced the challenge of integrating figures into a landscape without disrupting the unity of the composition. He achieved this by harmonising texture and colour, ensuring the figures complemented the surrounding scenery.
The vibrant blues and greens evoke the freshness of the coastal environment, while the figures’ white dresses add a focal point that draws the viewer’s eye. X-Rays of the painting reveal that Monet adjusted the rocky outcropping on the far right during the creative process to balance the proportions of sea and sky, demonstrating his meticulous attention to compositional harmony.
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Boulevard des Capucines, by Claude Monet
10. Boulevard des Capucines (1873)
In the early 1870s, Monet turned his attention to the bustling urban life of Paris, capturing its vibrancy through the lens of Impressionism. Painted between 1873 and 1874, Boulevard des Capucines offers a dynamic portrayal of one of Paris’s grand boulevards, reflecting the city’s modernisation under Baron Haussmann which is chronicled in other mediums, famously by Charles Baudelaire in his Les Fleurs du mal.
Monet created two versions of this scene from the vantage point of photographer Félix Nadar’s studio at 35 Boulevard des Capucines. One version, vertical in format, depicts a snowy street scene looking down the boulevard towards the Place de l’Opéra. The other, horizontal in composition, shows the same street on a sunny winter day. The horizontal version is believed to be the one exhibited at the first Impressionist exhibition in 1874.
Today, the vertical version of Boulevard des Capucines is housed at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, while the horizontal version resides at The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow. These works stand as testaments to Monet’s innovative approach to capturing the essence of modern urban life through Impressionism.
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Claude Monet’s paintings transcend time, capturing the ephemeral beauty of the world with a vision that feels both deeply personal and universally resonant. From the serene waters of Giverny to the lively streets of Paris and the sun-soaked coasts of Antibes, Monet’s works transport us to moments of profound beauty and reflection.
By exploring these ten masterpieces, we gain not only a greater appreciation of Monet’s artistry but also a glimpse into the transformative power of Impressionism. His ability to see and depict the extraordinary in the everyday continues to inspire and enchant art lovers around the globe.
Which of these works resonates most with you? Explore more of Monet’s timeless creations and bring a piece of his world into yours.
