Monet devoted the last dozen years of his life to the extraordinary large-scale decorative cycle that was installed in the Orangerie, Paris, after his death. With only a handful of exceptions, the motifs for the two hundred canvases on which he worked after his 1908 trip to Venice were taken from the extensive gardens that he had developed on his property at Giverny, and these canvases all relate in one way or another to the Orangerie cycle. His views of the water-lily pond are perhaps the most famous, but he also worked hard to extract novel compositions from other corners of his garden, where there were diverse plantings such as weeping willows, roses, and irises.

Like those he made of water lilies, his paintings of irises were meant to rise from the particular to the universal. In this work, the most highly finished of the series, the flowers are offered not as botanical specimens but as archetypes. Monet focused his energies on the movement of the swordlike leaves and on the unusual harmony of ocher, violet, blue green, and yellow green. Although the artist was already experiencing great difficulties with his eyesight, any grower of irises will recognize that he knowingly found the reddish purple tint that hides within every blue iris.