Claude Monet 
(1840 - 1926)
 

In 1893 Monet bought a plot of land next to his house in Giverny. He had already planted a colourful flower garden, but now he wanted to create a water garden ‘both for the pleasure of the eye and for the purpose of having subjects to paint'. He enlarged the existing pond, filling it with exotic new hybrid water lilies, and built a humpback bridge at one end, inspired by examples seen in Japanese prints. The water garden became the main obsession of Monet’s later career, and the subject of some 250 paintings.

Here, the bridge spans the width of the canvas but is cut off at the edges so that it seems to float unanchored above the water, its shape reflected in a dark arc at the bottom of the picture. The perspective seems to shift; it is as though we are looking up at the bridge but down on the water lilies which float towards the distance. The vertical reflections of the trees provide a counterpoint to the horizontal clumps of the lily pads.

https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/claude-monet-the-water-lily-pond

The_Water-Lily_Pond
1899
Oil on canvas
88.3 x 93.1 cm 
The National gallery, London
https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/claude-monet-the-water-lily-pond

The bridge and he pond are still there in Giverny and you can visit them, but just as with the Mona Lisa, you won’t be alone:

For a list of these 250 paintings you can visit Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_Lilies_(Monet_series)

For all the other paintings by Monet and Manet you can visit:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_paintings_by_Claude_Monet

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_paintings_by_Édouard_Manet