Artist | Claude Monet

Year | 1880

Medium

Oil on canvas

Dimensions

100 x 150 cm

Location

Petit Palais↗, Room 8

Sunset on the Seine at Lavacourt, Winter Effect

Following the particularly harsh winter of 1879, Claude Monet produced twenty or so paintings during the early months of 1880, observing the Seine’s ice slowly thawing. Driven by a lack of money, he sought reentry into the official Salon with this landscape of Lavacourt—a village on the left bank of the Seine, opposite his base in Vétheuil. While a deliberately toned down version was accepted, this work was rejected as Monet gave freer rein to pictorial experimentation.

The painting barely figures the topographical aspects, instead emphasizing the importance of air and water through colour. Monet used fine, fluid strokes in the upper third for the cold mist, while the water and banks feature wider strokes with impasto highlights. The orange sunset at the composition's center recalls the 1872 work, Impression, Sunrise (Paris, Marmottan Museum), providing an impression of haste, instability, and transience fitting for the twilight hour. This masterpiece was gifted to the Petit Palais in 1906 by Edward Brandus.