Monet’s carefully designed garden at Giverny presented the perfect opportunity for the artist to refine his series paintings, as it provided a micro-cosmos in which he could observe and paint the changes in weather, season and time of day, as well as the ever-changing colors and patterns. Monet thus paid exacting attention to the details of the garden, including maintaining the pond and plants in a perfect state for painting. More broadly, the role of gardens in Impressionist art was the subject of a major exhibition at the Royal Academy in London and the Cleveland Museum of Art, in which this painting featured prominently.

The Grandes Décorations, along with much of Monet’s late production, would influence artists throughout the following generations. The lasting legacy of Monet’s late work is most clearly seen in the art of the Abstract Expressionists, such as Joan Mitchell, Clyfford Still, Jackson Pollock, Sam Francis, and later artists such as Gerhard Richter, whose bold color palette and rejection of figuration is foreshadowed by Monet’s Nymphéas, with Coin du bassin aux nymphéas an influential and emblematic example that remains a hallmark of 20th century art.