4.9/5
If you want to know which museum has the most Monet paintings, the answer is the Musée Marmottan Monet in Paris. It holds more of his work than anywhere else on earth, and it got most of it in one go, from his son.
The runner-up sits across town, and the next three are in American cities most people wouldn't guess. If you've ever stood in front of one of the Monet paintings the studio copies by hand and wondered where the original lives, this is the map.
The short answer, and the full ranking
Counting paintings only (drawings and pastels would reshuffle the middle of the list):
| Museum | City | Monet paintings |
|---|---|---|
| Musée Marmottan Monet | Paris | 80 oils from the son's bequest alone, plus later gifts |
| Musée d'Orsay | Paris | 86 |
| Metropolitan Museum of Art | New York | 39 |
| Museum of Fine Arts | Boston | 35 |
| Art Institute of Chicago | Chicago | 33, plus 13 drawings |
| Musée de l'Orangerie | Paris | 8 giant Water Lilies compositions |
Wait, Orsay has more paintings than the Marmottan? On a strict oil-on-canvas headcount of the bequest, yes, it's close. But the Marmottan holds far more of Monet's work overall (sketchbooks, pastels, caricatures, the late Water Lilies nobody wanted), and it calls itself the world's biggest Monet collection with good reason. I'd give it the crown and not lose sleep over the count.
Marmottan: the paintings Monet kept for himself
When Michel Monet died in 1966, he left the Académie des Beaux-Arts 80 oil paintings, 4 pastels and 3 drawings by his father, along with caricatures and sketchbooks. These were the canvases still at Giverny: studies, unsold works, and a run of huge late Water Lilies that French national museums had refused to buy.
The Marmottan had opened on June 21, 1934, and it already owned the 1872 harbor view that named a movement. Victorine Donop de Monchy gave it sometime in 1940–1947, together with ten other Impressionist canvases. The big Water Lilies went on show in 1970, in a room dug under the garden, and the story of how the family collection arrived is worth reading before you go.
Go on a weekday morning. It's far quieter than Orsay, and you can stand alone with a Monet in a way that's impossible across the river.
Orsay or the Orangerie?
Orsay has the range. Every stage of his career is there, from the early Salon ambitions to the London Parliament views and the blue Water Lilies. The standout for me is the tall garden scene the 1867 Salon rejected, a canvas so big Monet dug a trench and lowered it on a pulley to reach the top without moving his viewpoint.
The Orangerie has one idea, done perfectly. Monet offered the state a set of decorative panels on November 12, 1918, the day after the Armistice. The eight compositions in two oval rooms all share a height of 1.97 m and run nearly 100 linear meters around you. The rooms opened on May 17, 1927, a few months after he died. He wanted them to give "the illusion of an endless whole, of a wave with no horizon and no shore," and they do. If you've fallen for a single Water Lilies canvas, this is where the series stops being a picture and becomes a room.
My advice: if you only have time for one, pick Orsay for breadth. If you have an hour to spare, add the Orangerie; eight paintings don't take long, and they stay with you. The garden that inspired both is outside Paris, and visiting Giverny painting by painting makes a good day trip after them.
Where can you see Monet paintings in the USA?
Three American museums hold more than 30 each.
New York. The Met lists 39 Monet paintings, the largest group of oils in the country. Start with the sunny terrace he painted in 1867, bought in 1967 and hanging in Gallery 818 at the Met.
Chicago. The Art Institute has 33 paintings and 13 drawings, the largest trove of his work outside Paris once you count paper. In 1903 it became the first American museum to buy a Monet. Its group of Stacks of Wheat, painted in 1890–1891, is the best place anywhere to see how he chased light across a single field.
Boston. The MFA owns all 35 of its Monet oils, including La Japonaise (1876). Boston hosted his second American solo show, and when he died in 1926 the museum opened a memorial exhibition just over a month later.
Washington. Not a big holder, but the National Gallery of Art has the 1880 garden at Vétheuil with its sunflowers, painted before he moved to Giverny. If you like his countryside more than his ponds, the landscapes beyond the water lilies will fill in the rest of the trip, and the canvases everyone recognizes on sight sit alongside his in most of these museums.
A Monet of your own
Seeing them in person is the best way to know which one you'd want on your own wall. When you've picked, Art & See paints each reproduction by hand in oil on canvas. You'll find every Monet canvas we paint to order in one place, from the Le Havre harbor to the lily pond.
