Water Lilies is a series

Serial imagery

Serial imagery is a central idea of modern and contemporary art. The Impressionists and their contemporaries were the first to use it, for example Claude Monet in his Poplars, Haystacks or Rouen Cathedral....

 of approximately 250 oil paintings by French Impressionist

Impressionism

Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement that originated with a group of Paris-based artists whose independent exhibitions brought them to prominence during the 1870s and 1880s...

 Claude Monet

Claude Monet

Claude Monet was a founder of French impressionist painting, and the most consistent and prolific practitioner of the movement's philosophy of expressing one's perceptions before nature, especially as applied to plein-air landscape painting. . Retrieved 6 January 2007...

 (1840–1926). The paintings depict Monet's flower garden

Flower garden

A flower garden is any garden where flowers are grown for decorative purposes. Because flowers bloom at varying times of the year, and some plants are annual, dying each winter, the design of flower gardens can take into consideration to maintain a sequence of bloom and even of consistent color...

 at Giverny

Giverny

Giverny is a commune in the Eure department in north-western France. It is best known as the location of Claude Monet's garden and home.-Location:Giverny sits on the "right bank" of the River Seine where the river Epte meets the Seine...

 and were the main focus of Monet's artistic production during the last thirty years of his life. Many of the works were painted while Monet suffered from cataracts.

The paintings are on display at museums all over the world, including the Musée Marmottan Monet in Paris, the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Metropolitan Museum of Art is a renowned art museum in New York City. Its permanent collection contains more than two million works, divided into nineteen curatorial departments. The main building, located on the eastern edge of Central Park along Manhattan's Museum Mile, is one of the...

 in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago

Art Institute of Chicago

The School of the Art Institute of Chicago is one of America's largest accredited independent schools of art and design, located in the Loop in Chicago, Illinois. It is associated with the museum of the same name, and "The Art Institute of Chicago" or "Chicago Art Institute" often refers to either...

, the Saint Louis Art Museum

Saint Louis Art Museum

The Saint Louis Art Museum is one of the principal U.S. art museums, visited by up to a half million people every year. Admission is free through a subsidy from the cultural tax district for St. Louis City and County.Located in Forest Park in St...

, the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art

Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art

The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art is an art museum in Kansas City, Missouri, known for its neoclassical architecture and extensive collection of Asian art....

 in Kansas City, Missouri, the Carnegie Museum of Art

Carnegie Museum of Art

The Carnegie Museum of Art, located in the Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, is an art museum founded in 1895 by the Pittsburgh-based industrialist Andrew Carnegie...

, the National Museum of Wales, the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nantes

Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nantes

The Fine arts Museum of Nantes is an art museum in Nantes, France.The museum was created in 1801 with the purchase of the Cacault collection and was located in is actual Palais des Beaux-Arts since 1900....

 and the Portland Art Museum

Portland Art Museum

The Portland Art Museum in Portland, Oregon, United States, was founded in 1892, making it the oldest art museum on the West Coast and seventh oldest in the United States. Upon completion of the most recent renovations, the Portland Art Museum became one of the twenty-five largest art museums in...

.