“People will get used to it, perhaps, but I came too early.”
Claude Monet
Claude Monet painted mainly out of doors, on the beaches of Normandy and along the banks of the Seine. What interested him was how light changes the colour of a thing from hour to hour, so he returned to the same subject at the same hour and only in similar weather, to keep the scene the same between one sitting and the next. Colour was his greatest obsession, his joy and his despair.
In 1871 he saw an exhibition of paintings by William Turner in London, and the English painter’s dark tones surprised him greatly. Soon afterwards he began to work in series: the same subject again and again, at different times of day and in different seasons. The strokes are short and kept apart, and the colour is laid so that the eye assembles it.
In the first years of the 20th century he turned to the landmarks of London — Parliament, and Waterloo Bridge and Charing Cross Bridge in fog. In his garden at Giverny he painted water lilies. Because that subject needed more surface, he moved to ever-larger canvases, so that the viewer too was given a wider field of view.
Towards the end of his life Monet moved close to abstraction — not only from a deliberate search for a different style, but also because he had developed cataracts: he really did see his famous water lilies that blurred. He was diagnosed in 1912 and was not operated on until 1923. After the operation he did not abandon the new style, so these works cannot simply be attributed to the illness.
Which Monet paintings can you order here?
Claude Monet painted the same subject again and again, at different hours and in different seasons. We carry 83 of his best-known subjects, each one painted by hand in oil on canvas. These are not prints and not photographic copies, but paintings an artist works up with a brush, with the real texture of the stroke.
Woman with a Parasol
The most requested subject on this page is Woman with a Parasol. Monet painted his wife Camille on a windy rise, seen from below against the sky, her dress and veil carried by the wind. It puts movement into a wall, and it suits a hallway or a stairwell where you see it in passing.
Impression, Sunrise
Close behind is Impression, Sunrise: the harbour at Le Havre in morning mist, an orange sun over grey water, the boats no more than dark strokes. Impressionism takes its name from this work. It reads best on a wall that gets morning light.
Water lilies, the Japanese bridge and the Seine
In his garden at Giverny, Monet painted hundreds of water lilies — from early views of the pond with the Japanese bridge to late, almost abstract crops of the water surface where sky and willows are reflected. Alongside them are the banks of the Seine at Argenteuil with sailing boats and poppy fields, and the Normandy coast. These subjects give a room openness and air, and they hold up in the larger sizes.
Made to your size, and choosing a frame
We paint every canvas in the size you choose. There are 174 formats available, from 29 × 22 to 394 × 238 cm, and prices start at 108 EUR. If you want a measurement that is not on the list, we paint it to order.
You choose the frame in our 3D application, where you see the work in different frames and decide which one suits it. If you want to see how it will look on your own wall, use our visualization service — that is a separate service from choosing a frame.
How do you order?
Choose the subject, then the size and the frame. An artist paints it specifically for you, so it takes some weeks to make. Because every canvas is done by hand, individual strokes and tones differ slightly between copies — that is not a fault, it is the difference between a painting and a print.