Arm of the Seine near Giverny, Rising Sun

Bras de Seine près de Giverny, soleil levant (Arm of the Seine near Giverny, Rising Sun) is a painting by Claude Monet from his Mornings on the Seine series, signed and dated Claude Monet 97 at the lower left. The canvas, 91 by 93 centimeters, is almost square. It is shown at the Musée Marmottan Monet in Paris, on deposit from the Fondation Ephrussi de Rothschild.

What you're looking at

Blue fills the picture. On the left, a great mass of trees rises the full height of the canvas, painted in deep blue, teal and violet, with a few pale, almost white touches near the top where the first light catches the leaves. On the right, a smaller rounded group of trees on the far bank stands in softer blue-lilac, half dissolved in mist. Between them, a channel of the river runs back into the distance, where low trees appear as faint lavender shapes.

The sky between the banks is a pale, milky blue-green, and here and there it warms: a few streaks of pink and pale yellow near the top center, a faint rose glow behind the far trees. Those touches are the sun rising, still hidden. The Marmottan describes them as the light pink and yellow that warm the canvas to suggest sunrise.

Below the horizon, which lies just under the center of the canvas, the trees are mirrored in water so still that bank and reflection merge. A band of pale lilac mist lies across the channel. The reflection of the sky makes a soft, pale path down the right center of the canvas, framed by the dark blue-violet reflections of the trees. At the lower left the signature, in dark red, is the sharpest mark in the picture.

Giverny, summers of 1896 and 1897

The Marmottan places the series at the confluence of the Seine and the Epte, near Giverny. Monet rose before dawn, rowed out to his motif, and recorded the passage from first light to sunrise on a set of canvases painted in turn. The composition hardly changes from one canvas to the next: large leafy trees frame the water and lead the eye to a horizon at mid-height. What changes is the color of the light. The museum also notes how the series, with its reflections and its emphasis on water, anticipates the Water Lilies.

How it was painted

The handling is soft and close-toned. Monet lays the trees in with feathery, blended strokes and fuses their edges into the surrounding sky and mist. The sky and water are thin, smoothly brushed layers in which the weave of the canvas shows. Contrast is kept low; the drama of the picture lies in the slight shift from cool blue to warm pink and yellow.

How this version differs

In the sequence of the morning, this canvas sits between the cold, pre-dawn Morning on the Seine, near Giverny in Boston, still entirely blue and mauve, and the full sunrise of Morning on the Seine, Good Weather, where the far trees glow orange. The Met's Morning on the Seine near Giverny is a little later still, with a gold sky. This version is distinguished by its dense, almost uniform blue, its taller format, and the faint, scattered warm touches that announce the sun. See the whole series in Mornings on the Seine and the village in Monet's Giverny.

Where to see it

The painting is shown at the Musée Marmottan Monet in Paris, on deposit from the Fondation Ephrussi de Rothschild, the foundation that runs the Villa Ephrussi de Rothschild at Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat. The Marmottan holds the world's largest collection of Monet's works; see Monet at the Musée Marmottan.