Unity in art is the sense that every part of a picture belongs to one whole, so that nothing in it looks added from outside. Painters build it with a repeated brushstroke, a narrow palette, a single light or an enveloping pattern. It is easiest to see in Claude Monet's Water Lilies, the late panels with no horizon, no bank and no edge to cut them into parts.
Monet got there by taking things away. In the Water Lilies he removed the horizon, the bank and every edge that could divide the picture, and what remains is water, reflections and flowers in one continuous range of blues and greens.
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Monet's own word for what he was after was illusion. He wanted, he said, the illusion of an endless whole, a wave with no horizon and no shore. He worked on the series from the late 1890s until his death in 1926, at the age of 86, which is a long time to spend on one effect.
The effect did not arrive on schedule. On 12 November 1918, the day after the Armistice, Monet wrote to Clemenceau that two decorative panels were nearly done and asked him to offer them to the state. The offer grew, the deadline slipped, and Monet kept the canvases until he died. The two oval rooms that now hold them opened in 1927, a few months after his death.
The finished rooms look settled, as if the water had always been there. For Monet they never were finished: he was still asking for more time when he died. Three other painters show how differently unity can be built, and one of them, Turner, was told by the critics of his day that they could not even make out the boat from the harbour.
Why would Monet not let go of the Water Lilies?
Because he was still dissatisfied, and the state had to wait…
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