Alex Katz, the American figurative painter born in 1927, whose large-scale paintings are associated with Pop Art, has been producing landscapes since the 1950s. Based in New York, he works in summer in his studio deep in the Maine countryside, near a water lily pond. It was from this motif that he produced a series of paintings in homage to Monet's Water Lilies.

He assures:"The water lilies are on the pond in Maine and I've been looking at them for 50 years but I never touched them because of Monet. But I said you’re going to do it, and I just did it."

Alex Katz produced small charcoal sketches on this motif, and later transposed them to large canvases. It is a series of four to five very beautiful paintings that will be displayed in the exhibition galleries of the Musée de l'Orangerie.