The Water Lilies, Green Reflections, right

Claude Monet spent the last stretch of his life fixated on a single subject: the lily pond in his garden at Giverny, France. This painting is the right half of one of his massive wraparound canvases, part of a project he worked on until his death in 1926. The idea behind these huge panels was simple but bold. Monet wanted them to wrap around the room and surround viewers, so that standing before them would feel like standing at the very edge of the water.

Search for a horizon or a patch of sky and you will not find one. Monet gives us only the water's surface, scattered with lily pads and streaked with the dark green reflections of trees and drifting clouds. The effect is dreamy and loose, so much so that the painting drifts toward pure abstraction, which is why so many later artists looked back to it for inspiration. Monet made these works while cataracts clouded his vision, and that may account for the hazy brushwork and deep, shadowy greens. What he offers is less a picture of a pond than the feeling of one, a hushed moment that still holds people's attention today.