Your Greatest Work is Still Ahead of You

When you hear “Claude Monet,” you probably picture his iconic paintings of water lilies.

What you may not know is that he nearly abandoned this project—and almost never finished it.

As the story goes…

A few years before his 70th birthday, Monet became creatively blocked and imprisoned by self-doubt. He had been working on a collection of water lilies but couldn’t get things to look the way he wanted.

Painting water is tricky—it is never still, always shifting in the wind, the light always changing. How do you capture something that is perpetually in fluid motion?

Monet felt vexed and frustrated, unable to capture the beauty of the lilies as he envisioned.

Further compounding Monet’s distress, his art dealer worried that these large, abstract paintings weren’t commercially viable and wouldn’t sell. The dealer’s lack of confidence sent Monet spiraling further into his pit of doubt.

Witnessing her husband’s distress, Monet’s wife Alice said, “You need a break. Let’s go to Venice.” (I’m paraphrasing here, but that was the gist of it.)

In Venice, Italy, Monet was awestruck by the beauty that surrounded him—the way the luminous light filtered into the water, the gondolas, and exquisite architecture. He described the city as “too beautiful to be painted,” though he decided to try anyway.

During his two-month stay in Venice, he didn’t paint lilies. Instead, he painted the city—often painting the same scene at different times of day to capture the ever-shifting light on the water. He ended up creating 37 oil-on-canvas paintings inspired by Venezia, the city of canals.

When he and Alice returned home, Monet tackled his water lily collection with renewed excitement and a new perspective.

Thanks to his time in Venice, the floating city, Monet had a new understanding of water and was able to translate what he saw in his mind onto the canvas.

Finally, he finished his water lilies.

The new collection debuted and was a resounding success.

There’s so much I love about this story—and three lessons that I find personally impactful.

One: breakthroughs rarely happen when you are pacing around your workspace, stuck in your office, or glued to a screen. The miracle arrives when you step away from habitual patterns.

A walk, a long drive, or wandering through a new place—this is what creates enough space in your mind for inspiration to drop in.

Two: when someone you love says, “Come away with me, let’s go on a trip…” as often as you can, even if it is greatly inconvenient and the timing is far from ideal, take the trip.

You will be transformed and revived, likely in ways you didn’t even know you needed.

And, some opportunities do not last forever. (Alice, Monet’s beloved wife, died just a few years after their life-altering journey to Venice. Thank goodness they experienced their journey together, while they could.)

Three: your greatest work is still ahead of you. The best is yet to come.

Monet was in his 70s and 80s when he painted some of his most beloved water lily paintings, now cherished by millions around the world, and valued at $70 million apiece.

Masterpieces can be born in every stage of life.

It is never too late to create something beautiful. Or to revisit a project you abandoned long ago, whether large or small. You can return to it, perhaps even finish it, this decade, this year, or today.

Today is not over yet.

PS. If you have the opportunity to see the “Monet and Venice” exhibition at the de Young Museum in San Francisco—do it. It’s breathtaking.