Monet's Water Lilies: The Agapanthus Triptych
Authored by Simon Kelly with contributions from
Mary Schafer and Johanna Bernstein
Published by the Saint Louis Art Museum with The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Cleveland Museum of Art
University of Washington Press, distributor

64 Pages
ISBN: 978- 0- 89178-095-3
$16.95 (hardback)
Available in the Museum Shop and online at www.slam.org

Catalogue

Claude Monet was the most important of all the Impressionist painters, and his water-lily paintings represent the culminating achievement of his career. Monet's famous garden at Giverny— illustrated in this book in a number of the artist's paintings and studies, as well as in archival photographs—provided the inspiration for these paintings. This book focuses on one of Monet's most impressive water-lily triptychs, Agapanthus, executed between 1915 and 1926, and explores the fascinating and little-known history behind its creation.

Drawing on new technical analysis, the book examines the relationship between Agapanthus and related studies, as well as Monet's incessant reworking of the triptych. It also provides new information on Monet's original plans for the work's installation in a museum dedicated to his art to be erected in the garden of the Musée Rodin, Paris. Also explored is the posthumous history of the triptych, including its critical reception when first exhibited in the United States in the mid-1950s and its subsequent splitting up into three separate compositions, which were acquired by three Midwestern museums: the Saint Louis Art Museum, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, and The Cleveland Museum of Art. The book accompanies an exhibition that reunites the triptych panels for the first time in more than 30 years.

Simon Kelly is curator of modern and contemporary art at the Saint Louis Art Museum. Among his many publications is a recent catalogue essay in Manet, The Man Who Invented Modernity (2011). Mary Schafer is associate painting conservator at The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri. Johanna Bernstein is a materials scientist at the Institute for Advance Materials, Devices, and Nanotechnology at Rutgers.