When this work and forty-seven other Monet paintings of waterlilies (nymphéas) were first exhibited in 1909 an enthusiastic critic proclaimed: 'Here, more than ever before, painting approaches music and poetry. There is in these paintings an inner beauty, refined and pervasive; the beauty of a play and of a concert, a beauty that is both plastic and ideal.' This is the most delicately-coloured and abstract-looking of the three Monet Nymphéas purchased by Gwendoline Davies at Paris in 1913.