Monet, painting time, at the Musée de l’Orangerie
Until 25 January 2027 at the Musée de l’Orangerie, Paris. A hundred years after Monet’s death, almost forty paintings show how he tried to paint time itself.
Claude Monet died in December 1926. A century later, the museum that holds his greatest gift to France has made an exhibition about the one subject that ran through all his work: time. Monet, painting time is at the Musée de l'Orangerie in Paris until 25 January 2027, before it travels to Tate Modern in London.
What the show is
The exhibition brings together almost forty of Monet's paintings, most of them from the Musée d'Orsay and the Musée Marmottan Monet, with loans from other public and private collections in France and abroad. It is curated by Cécile Girardeau and Sophie Eloy of the Musée de l'Orangerie.
The museum describes its route in stages: the feeling of time speeding up in the modern world of the Impressionists; the attempt to catch a single instant on canvas; the series, in which Monet painted the same subject again and again as the light changed; and finally the Nymphéas, the water lilies, on which he worked for the last decades of his life.
Works to look for
The museum names several of the series in the show: the haystacks of 1888 to 1891, the poplars on the banks of the Epte, mornings on the Seine, and Rouen Cathedral. The painting above is one of the Rouen Cathedral series, the portal in grey weather of 1892, which belongs to the Musée d'Orsay, the exhibition's main lender.
The series are the heart of the idea. Monet would set up several canvases in front of the same view and move from one to another as the hours passed, working on each only while its particular light lasted. The cathedral was not really his subject. The subject was the air between him and the stone, and how it changed from morning to dusk. Seen together, the paintings turn a building into a clock.
The other highlight is the water lilies, which the museum gives particular emphasis. It illustrates the show with Le Bassin aux nymphéas, harmonie verte of 1899, from the Musée d'Orsay: an early view of the garden pond at Giverny and its Japanese bridge.
Why it matters
Monet's water lilies are why the Orangerie became a museum of art. Two oval rooms there hold his enormous Nymphéas murals, which he gave to the French state and which were installed after his death. Seeing the earlier series and pond paintings in the same building lets you follow how he got there: from catching a moment, to painting many moments of the same view, to the huge, enveloping panels in which time seems to stop.
The centenary also makes this a moment to look again at a painter who can seem overfamiliar. In the series, Monet was doing something radical: making the passage of time, not a place or a person, the true subject of a painting.
Plan your visit
The exhibition runs from 30 September 2026 to 25 January 2027 at the Musée de l'Orangerie, in the Tuileries Garden in Paris. It then travels to Tate Modern, London, from 25 February to 27 June 2027. If you see it there, the same trip can take in the Bayeux Tapestry at the British Museum, on show until 11 July 2027.
The museum lists timed full-price tickets at €12.50 and reduced tickets at €10, with free entry for under-18s and for residents of the European Economic Area under 26, and a €10 late-night ticket on Fridays from 6 to 9 pm. It is open from 9 am to 6 pm and closed on Tuesdays. Some time slots have sold out, so book ahead. A virtual-reality experience, Monet au fil de l'eau, runs alongside the show and is not included in the standard ticket.
Leave time for the two oval Nymphéas rooms. Check the latest details on the Musée de l'Orangerie's exhibition page before you go.
