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An exhibition featuring two paintings from the impressionist masters, Claude Monet and VincentVan Gogh, opened here recently to mark the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Shanghai Museum.

Water Lilies, one of the exhibits and one of Monet's most favored paintings, captures the charm and magical beauty of a lotus pond.

It was painted in 1917, and is larger in size and more delicately presented than another painting in Monet's Water Liliesseries which fetched 20 million U.S. dollars at a recent Sotheby'sauction.

Also showing at the Shanghai Museum is a painting from Van Gogh's wheat field series, and from the Dutch master's later years. The painting vividly conveys a June harvest in a beautiful French village through its striking colors, coarse brushwork and contoured forms.

The two masterpieces are hung in a dimly lit exhibition hall, which has had wooden floors and tinted glass specially installed. All efforts have been made to enable viewers to have a good look at the two masterpieces, sources from the Shanghai Museum said.

Having only the two paintings in the exhibition will hopefully mean they will attract all the attention of viewers, said Chen Xiejun, curator of the Shanghai Museum.

The two paintings belong to Honolulu Gallery of the United States and will be exhibited in Shanghai for two months.