Bras de Seine à Giverny

Bras de Seine à Giverny (Arm of the Seine at Giverny) is a painting Claude Monet made in 1885, two years after he settled at Giverny, of one of the side channels of the Seine near the village. It is signed Claude Monet at the lower right and measures 66 by 93 centimeters. The painting belongs to the Musée Marmottan Monet in Paris, which received it in 1966 with the bequest of Michel Monet, the painter's younger son.

What you're looking at

The view looks along the river toward a distant gap in the trees. At the upper left, a large tree leans in from the edge of the canvas, its foliage painted in dark blue, teal and green against the sky, its branches arching over the water like a frame. On the right, a long bank of trees and shrubs runs back toward the center in bright yellow-green, olive and blue, the sun catching the tops of the leaves.

The sky is lively and windy: drifting clouds in cream, white and pale yellow, broken by patches of clear blue, laid on in thick, swirling strokes. Down on the water, at the left of center, a small boat with two figures sits near the far bank, the only sign of people. The river fills the lower third of the picture with broad horizontal bands of color: mauve, pink, dull red, cream and blue, the reflections of the trees and clouds broken by ripples. A light, almost white streak runs down the center, the bright sky reflected in the water.

The palette is warm and sunlit, a long way from the misty blues Monet would use on the same river a decade later.

Giverny in 1885

Monet moved to Giverny in April 1883 with Alice Hoschedé and their combined family of eight children. The village lies where the Epte meets the Seine, and its river channels, islands and boatyards gave him a new repertory of motifs. In these first years he painted the river with his family boating on it, as in The Boat at Giverny, and the meadows around the village, as in Haystacks at Giverny. He had not yet built his water garden, and the Seine was still his main water subject.

How it was painted

The handling is energetic and textured. The foliage is built with short, crisscrossing strokes; the sky with thick, curving dabs that suggest moving cloud; the water with long horizontal strokes of separate color laid side by side. The contrast between the dark, cool tree at left and the sunlit warm bank at right sets up the space, and the small boat gives the scale.

Looking forward to the Mornings on the Seine

This canvas shows the same kind of place Monet would return to in 1896–97 for his series Mornings on the Seine: a quiet branch of the river, trees on both banks, the channel running back between them. Compared with those later pictures, such as Morning on the Seine near Giverny or Arm of the Seine near Giverny, Rising Sun in the same museum, this is a daytime scene with wind, sun and people, painted in broken, separate strokes rather than the soft, blended veils of the later series. Seen together, they show how far Monet moved in ten years from recording a moment toward painting an atmosphere. For the village and garden, see Monet's Giverny.

Where to see it

The painting is in the Musée Marmottan Monet in Paris, home of the largest collection of works by Claude Monet. Displays rotate; see Monet at the Musée Marmottan.