[Water Lilies]

In order to produce the "documents for artists" that the sign at his door advertised, it was necessary for Eugène Atget to be aware of what the subjects of contemporary art were and to gauge what kinds of images would be useful to painters, illustrators, set and fabric designers, and interior decorators in making their own work. It is tempting to think that this image of water lilies derives directly from Atget's awareness of Claude Monet's grand series of paintings of the water lilies in his garden at Giverny, which the artist began in 1899. However, there are no known associations between the photographer and the painter.

Studies of plants were a recurrent theme in Atget's work, dating from the pictures of about 1900 of apple trees in bloom to those of nasturtium leaves in the 1920s. The white disk of an identifying plant marker that can be seen in the lower left quadrant of this photograph indicates that it was made in the botanical garden of Bagatelle, a park on the outskirts of Paris. (See also: 84.XP.208.4, 84.XP.208.7, 84.XM.794, 90.XM.48, 90.XM.64.26, 90.XM.124.3, 2002.37.5)

Originally published in Eugène Atget, In Focus: Photographs from the J. Paul Getty Museum by Gordon Baldwin (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2000), 48. ©2000, J. Paul Getty Trust.