People often ask: ‘Is that an original?’ I always reply, ‘We’re a museum; we only have originals.’ My name is Maria Luise Ziltener-Fuiko; I’ve been working as a museum attendant here for about 10 years and am happy to provide information to visitors if they’d like it. Well, Claude Monet died in 1926 and had actually almost been forgotten, because painting and artistic development had moved on and he was, in a sense, old-fashioned. His art wasn’t really in great demand. In 1948, there was a major exhibition in Basel featuring works from Monet’s estate, and this piece was, so to speak, put up for sale. Measuring 2 by 2 metres, oil on canvas – it had cost a mere 10,000 francs at the time. That’s unbelievable from today’s perspective. Winterthur was bold enough to purchase this work, even though Monet was no longer particularly fashionable at the time. After Winterthur bought one of these water-lily paintings, Zurich immediately followed suit, and other renowned museums then also became determined to acquire a water-lily painting; and it was actually thanks to the courage of the Kunst Museum Winterthur – or rather, the Galerieverein – that Monet was suddenly the talk of the town once again.