Morning on the Seine, Good Weather

Morning on the Seine, Good Weather (Matin sur la Seine, beau temps) is a painting by Claude Monet from his series of dawn views of a backwater of the Seine near Giverny, signed and dated Claude Monet 97 at the lower left. It measures 89 by 92 centimeters and belongs to the White House in Washington, D.C. It was given by the Kennedy family in memory of President John F. Kennedy.

What you're looking at

This is the "fine weather" canvas of the series, and the warmest. On the left, a high wall of trees leans over the water, painted in deep teal, blue-green and slate, with a few lilac and pale gray highlights where the light grazes the leaves. In the middle distance, a second group of trees on the same bank turns violet and rose in the mist. On the right, the trees of the far bank are soft and luminous, lit from within by peach, orange and gold, as if the sun were rising just behind them.

The sky between the banks is a pale apricot and cream, the brightest area of the canvas. The horizon runs straight across a little below the middle, where a thin band of pinkish mist lies on the water. Below it, everything is reflected. The dark trees on the left drop into the water as long, broken strokes of blue and green; the warm light in the center becomes a vertical column of pink, cream and gold, rippling slightly; the glowing trees at right repeat as a soft orange haze. In the lower right a few horizontal white strokes show the surface of the water.

The signature in the lower left corner is in dark red. The canvas is very nearly square.

Giverny, summer 1897

Monet painted this series in 1896 and, mostly, in the summer of 1897, from a studio boat on a quiet arm of the Seine near the mouth of the Epte, a short distance from his house at Giverny. He started work before dawn and moved from canvas to canvas as the light changed. The titles of several canvases, mist, fine weather, rainy weather, show how he thought of them: as a set of distinct conditions of the same place.

How it was painted

The paint is thin and smooth in the sky and water, thicker and more broken in the foliage. Monet uses temperature to make space: the cool blue-green trees at left feel close, the warm orange trees at right feel far away and full of light. The horizontal band of mist is laid in with a few long strokes of pink-white that cross the whole channel.

How this version differs

Compared with the blue, pre-dawn Morning on the Seine, near Giverny in Boston, this canvas shows the sun's arrival: orange, gold and rose replace mauve. It is warmer and more sunlit than the Met's Morning on the Seine near Giverny and close in mood to the Marmottan's Rising Sun, though that picture stays bluer. At the far end of the range is the Tokyo canvas in rain, Morning on the Seine (1898). See the whole series in Mornings on the Seine and the village in Monet's Giverny.

A Monet in the White House

The painting came to the White House as a memorial gift from the Kennedy family after the president's death in 1963. It hung in the Green Room, President Kennedy's favorite of the State Floor parlors. The White House Historical Association records that it was moved to the Second Floor Residence before Jacqueline Kennedy's private visit in February 1971, to make room for the official portrait of her husband.

Where to see it

As part of the White House collection, the painting is not on regular public view; where it hangs depends on each administration's choices for the State Floor and the private residence. For Monet canvases from this series in public museums, see where to see Monet's paintings.