National Treasures: Monet in York ‘The Water-Lily Pond’

National Treasures: Monet in York ‘The Water-Lily Pond’
10 May – 8 September 2024

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Monet’s ‘The Water-Lily Pond’ will be the central feature of a major new exhibition at York Art Gallery to mark the 200^th anniversary of the National Gallery on 10 May 2024.

Painted by one of the founders of the Impressionist movement Claude Monet (1840-1926), ‘The Water-Lily Pond’ (1899) will be the centrepiece of an exhibition which will bring together key loans from regional and national institutions alongside collection works, and a large-scale commission by contemporary artist Michaela Yearwood-Dan. Monet’s canvas will be explored in the context of 19th-century French open-air painting, pictures by his early mentors, and the Japanese prints which transformed his practice and beloved gardens in Giverny. By displaying canvases by those contemporaries he inspired, as well as more modern artworks and a new commission, the exhibition will reveal how Monet’s radical approach to painting had, and continues to have, an enduring influence on artists.

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 bridge at one end, inspired by examples seen in Japanese prints. The water garden became the main obsession of Monet’s later career. The National Gallery’s 1899 ‘The Water-Lily Pond’ painting was amongst his earlier canvases on this theme.

In the Gallery, Monet will be joined by works from our own collection, key loans from national and regional museums, and a vibrant new commission by contemporary artist Michaela Yearwood-Dan. In the gardens nearby, a wildflower meadow has been planted with frames around the gardens to encourage audiences to get creative and engage in open-air sketching.

National Treasures is a key strand of the National Gallery’s programme celebrating the Gallery’s Bicentenary. Each partner venue will receive a masterpiece from the Gallery’s collection. For the duration of the displays, 35 million people – more than half the UK population – will be within an hour’s journey of a National Gallery masterpiece.

The exhibition at York Art Gallery is supported by wealth management company JM Finn and Little Greene Paint Company as the official paint partner.

More information about Michaela Yearwood-Dan can be found here

Michaela Yearwood-Dan – Biography | Marianne Boesky Gallery

Claude Monet (1840 – 1926), The Water-Lily Pond, 1899 © The National Gallery, London

Programme of events:

11 May- Open Air Landscape Drawing

25 May- Yoga at York Art Gallery

1 June- Japanese Woodblock Printing

8 June- Open Air Landscape Drawing

22 June- Capture Monet’s Water Lilies in Watercolour

29 June- Yoga at York Art Gallery

13 July- Open Air Landscape Drawing

20 July- Ikebana Inspired Floral Design Workshop

27 July- Yoga at York Art Gallery

10 August- Open Air Landscape Drawing

17 August- Capture Monet’s Water Lilies in Watercolour

31 August- Sound Bath at York Art Gallery

Monet In Conversation Programme, Thursdays, 2pm 

(Each session will take place in front of the painting unless otherwise specified. Entrance is included within admission price.)

Academics from varied disciplines take Monet’s The Water-Lily Pond as a starting point in these half-hour gallery conversations about the artist’s connections with their research.

In conjunction with Humanities Research Centre, University of York, these talks are part of the Festival of Ideas:

Thursday 30 May – Professor Michael White (History of Art) 
On Monet

Thursday 6 June – Dr Jonathan Brockbank (English Literature) 
The Soil and Soul of France: Monet’s The Water-Lily Pond in Context

Thursday 20 June – Dr Liz Haddon, Marianna Cortesi, Federico Pendenza and Laura Sutcliffe (Music)
Art as a creative springboard: from Monet to music

Thursday 27 June – Dr Pablo Fernandez Velasco (Philosophy) 
Light, air and atmosphere: philosophical lessons from Monet’s The Water-Lily Pond

Thursday 4 July – Dr Thomas Houlton (Film & Literature)
A daylong obsession: Claude Monet, Derek Jarman and the Pursuit of Colour

(Please note this session will take place in the Tempest Anderson Hall at the Yorkshire Museum, and includes a film showing of Jarman’s Blue touching on themes including HIV and Aids, suitable for age 15+)

Special Events, Thursdays 2pm

National Gallery Curator Talk

Thursday 23 May – Dr Chris Riopelle, The Neil Westreich Curator of Post 1800 Paintings at the National Gallery, London

Monet’s ‘The Water-Lily Pond’

The longest lived of the key French Impressionist masters, Claude Monet (1840-1926) was every bit as radical and inventive a painter at the end of life as in fearless youth. In his final years his principal – indeed, obsessive – subject was the lower of two gardens at his country estate at Giverny west of Paris. It was dominated by an arching Japanese bridge over a pond of water-lilies. For decades he explored with unending pleasure the ever-changing light conditions, advancing and retreating foliage and myriad reflections on the pond. This is a key early work in the series, executed just before the turn of the 20th century. The talk explores the surprising richness of the theme, Monet’s use of scale and canvas shape to invest meaning, and his flirtation with painterly abstraction, so influential on later generations of painters.

  Christopher Riopelle is The Neil Westreich Curator of Post 1800 Paintings at the National Gallery, London. He has held curatorial positions at the J. Paul Getty Museum, California, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art and taught at the American College, Paris, New York University and the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.  Recent exhibitions he has curated or co-curated include Delacroix and the Rise of Modern Art (Minneapolis and London, 2015-16), Inventing Impressionism: Paul Durand-Ruel and the Modern Art Market (Paris, London and Philadelphia, 2014-15), Forests, Rocks, Torrents: Norwegian and Swiss Landscapes from the Lunde Collection (London, 2011), Sorolla: Spanish Master of Light (London and Dublin, 2019), Gauguin Portraits (Ottawa and London, 2019-20) and Conversations with God: Matejko’s ‘Copernicus’ (2021). He is currently preparing the National Gallery’s major bicentenary exhibition Van Gogh: Poets & Lovers opening in September 2024.

The National Waterlily Collection at Burnby Hall Gardens & Museum

Thursday 18 July – Ian Murphy, Estate Manager

(note this takes place at York Art Gallery in front of the Monet painting)

11am and 2pm

Find out more about the national collection of waterlilies at nearby Burnby Hall Gardens & Museum in Pocklington, East Yorkshire with staff who manage the estate, and hear how the team care about the national collection of waterlilies there.

National Treasures: Monet in York at Burnby Hall Gardens & Museum

Monday 8 July – Steve Williams and Alexandra Woodall, York Museums Trust

11am, 12noon and 2pm

(note this takes place in Burnby Hall Meeting Room)

A reciprocal partnership event at Burnby Hall Gardens & Museum which will explore National Treasures: Monet in York for people visiting at the National Waterlily Collection.

Important information

Please note Monet In York ‘The Water-Lily Pond’ will be closed to the public until 11am on 10 May 2024. Visitors will be able to view the permanent collection from 10am.

York Art Gallery will also be closed to the public until 12 noon on 13 June, 4 July and 25 July 2024. We apologise for any inconvenience caused.