The Seine in Argenteuil
The broad, calm reach of the Seine at Argenteuil with sailing boats — the river Monet made the great subject of his 1870s.
Argenteuil
The painting depicts a real landscape or cityscape. The precise viewpoint the artist used may be unknown, so the marker shows the general area.
The Seine in Argenteuil — at a glance
- Artist
- Claude Monet (1840–1926)
- Year
- 1872–1875
- Movement
- Impressionism
- Place
- The Seine at Argenteuil, north-west of Paris
- Viewpoint
- The sailing reach of the river — the reach and a sailing club survive; the banks are now dense suburb
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Dimensions
- c. 55 × 73 cm
- Now at
- Various collections (Musée d'Orsay; National Gallery of Art, Washington)
Overview
The Seine at Argenteuil is a title shared by a number of closely related canvases Claude Monet painted between 1872 and 1875, when he lived at Argenteuil. They show the wide, slow reach of the river with its pleasure yachts and rowing boats, the leafy or built banks, reflections in the water, and a broad sky. They are oil on canvas, typically about 55 by 73 cm; examples are in the Musée d'Orsay, the National Gallery of Art, Washington, and other collections.
Where was The Seine in Argenteuil painted?
Scholarship Argenteuil, about 10 km north-west of central Paris, sits on a wide, calm stretch of the Seine that made it the main sailing and rowing centre near the capital. Monet lived there from 1871 to 1878 and made the river his central subject — bridges, boats, the basin, the banks. The reach of the Seine survives and there is still a sailing club; the banks are now dense inner suburb, so these pictures record the semi-rural river of the 1870s rather than a marked viewpoint.
What is in the painting?
The river fills the picture, blue-green and lightly rippled. White-sailed yachts lie or move on it; the near bank carries a path, trees or a wall, sometimes a figure; the far bank has houses and trees, sometimes a factory chimney. Reflections of boats and bank break up the lower half. A wide, luminous, cloud-dappled sky.
Look closely
The white-sailed yachts
Pleasure boats lie and move on the wide, slow river — the pastime Argenteuil was known for.
The broken reflections
Masts, hulls and bank are doubled and broken up in short horizontal strokes on the water.
The far-bank chimney
In some versions a factory chimney on the opposite bank marks the industrial edge of the leisure reach.
Analysis
Composition and technique
A horizontal river with sailing boats, framed by banks, under a large Impressionist sky, painted in quick bright strokes.
Scholarship Monet uses the standard river-landscape structure and enlivens it with the verticals of masts and the broken colour of reflections, painting the water in short horizontal dashes. Working the same reach again and again in different light was a step towards his later series.
History & provenance
The Argenteuil Seine pictures are spread across many museums and private collections.
Sources
- Musée d'Orsay / National Gallery of Art, Washington — collection entries for Monet's Seine at Argenteuil pictures
- Paul Hayes Tucker, ‘Monet at Argenteuil’ (Yale University Press, 1982)
Related paintings
More by Claude Monet
Impression, Sunrise
Woman with a Parasol – Madame Monet and Her Son
Houses on the Achterzaan
Also connected to Argenteuil
Woman with a Parasol – Madame Monet and Her Son
