One of Monet’s critics described this canvas of 1919 as waterlilies "in full flower assert[ing] themselves … their golden discs encased in purple, against the cloudy waters." Although the almost eighty-year-old artist was reluctant to part with recent paintings, he made this landscape and three related pictures with an eye to the market, telling his dealers, Gaston and Josse Bernheim, that he was "working on them passionately." The Bernheim brothers quickly purchased the quartet.
