25/01/2026
From
✨hope is a verb.✨
and it’s love language is art.
Claude Monet expressed a profound sense of guilt and shame about making art while World War I was raging around him.
In a letter from 1914, while working on his famous Water Lilies series at his home in Giverny, Monet wrote:
“Yesterday I resumed work. It’s the best way to avoid thinking of these sad times. All the same, I feel ashamed to think about my little researches into form and colour while so many people are suffering and dying...”
Monet eventually decided to create a grand series of his water lily paintings as a donation to France to memorialize the end of World War I in 1918, intending them as a symbol of peace and beauty in contrast to the brutality of the conflict.
These paintings are now permanently housed in the Musée de l’Orangerie in Paris, displayed in two oval rooms designed specifically for them to create an immersive experience of peace and contemplation.
What lights you up today?
Do that.
💜
Nina
