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Irises

A work made of oil on canvas.
CC0 Public Domain Designation

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  • A work made of oil on canvas.

Date:

1914/17

Artist:

Claude Monet
French, 1840-1926

About this artwork

Approximately six and a half feet square, Irises is one of a series of large paintings Claude Monet undertook during World War I experimenting with familiar motifs on an ever-expanding scale. Lacking a discernible horizon or clear sense of depth, the viewer is both on top of and submerged in this encrusted and disorienting surface, suggestive of water, on which various vegetal and floral forms float.

Together with other related canvases, this work remained in the artist’s Giverny studio long after his death in 1926 and was only rediscovered in the 1950s, having suffered localized damage by shrapnel from shells during World War II. In 1956 the Art Institute’s pioneering curator of modern art, Katherine Kuh, bought this painting from Katia Granoff’s gallery in Paris. Kuh recognized a formal affinity between Monet’s late experimental painting and the public’s growing interest in large-scale, abstract works like those by Jackson Pollock, whose Greyed Rainbow entered the Art Institute’s collection in 1955.

Status

On View, Gallery 243

Department

Painting and Sculpture of Europe

Artist

Claude Monet

Title

Irises

Place

France (Artist's nationality:)

Date  Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

1914–1926

Medium

Oil on canvas

Inscriptions

Signed w/estate stamp, l.r.: "Claude Monet"

Dimensions

200 × 200.7 cm (78 3/4 × 79 in.)

Credit Line

Art Institute Purchase Fund

Reference Number

1956.1202

IIIF Manifest  The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world.

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https://api.artic.edu/api/v1/artworks/4887/manifest.json

Extended information about this artwork

Object information is a work in progress and may be updated as new research findings emerge. To help improve this record, please email . Information about image downloads and licensing is available here.

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