Poplars on the Banks of the Epte, Autumn

Peupliers au bord de l'Epte, automne (Poplars on the Banks of the Epte, Autumn) is a painting from Claude Monet's 1891 series of poplars on the river Epte near Giverny, catalogued by Wildenstein as no. 1297. It is a tall, narrow upright canvas, signed and dated Claude Monet 91 at the lower right, and it is in a private collection.

What you're looking at

The canvas is about one and a half times as tall as it is wide, and Monet fills it with trees. Six or seven poplars stand in a row along the riverbank, their trunks evenly spaced across the picture like the bars of a fence, rising from the water's edge to the top of the canvas. The trunks are pale pink and lilac, wrapped from bottom to top in clumps of blue-green and teal leaves, the ivy or shoots that grow along poplar trunks.

The crowns of the trees are in full autumn color. At the top of the canvas they form a broad canopy of rust, brick red, coral, orange and olive, painted in thick, flickering strokes, highest on the right and stepping down toward the left. Behind the trunks, a lower row of bushes and younger trees glows in orange and gold. Between them, the sky shows in pale cream and pink.

At the bottom, a dark band of blue and green grass marks the bank, and below that the Epte reflects the scene in orange, cream and blue, the trunks continuing downward as wavering green verticals. The signature, in red, is at the lower right.

The Poplars series

Monet painted the line of poplars on the Epte near Limetz in the summer and autumn of 1891 from his studio boat. When the commune sold the trees for timber, he arranged with the buyer to leave them standing until he had finished. This canvas belongs to the group in which the whole row is seen from close to, filling a tall canvas, like Philadelphia's Poplars on the Banks of the River Epte and the twilight Poplars on the Banks of the Epte, Dusk.

How it was painted

Monet builds the picture on a grid: the vertical trunks, evenly spaced, against the horizontal of the bank and the step-like line of the crowns. Within that structure the brushwork is loose and varied, short dabs in the foliage, long vertical strokes for the trunks and their green wrappings, horizontal touches in the water. The contrast between the cool blue-green trunks and the hot autumn crowns gives the picture its energy.

How this version differs

Most autumn canvases in the series show three trees, such as Poplars (Autumn). This one shows the whole row up close, and its crowns are deeper and redder, a late-autumn rust rather than pink. Compared with Row of Poplars in Autumn, which shows a similar row in gold against a gray sky, it is warmer and more saturated. See the whole series in the Poplars series and the countryside in Monet's Giverny.

Where to see it

The painting is privately owned and not on public view. For poplars from the series in public museums, including the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Museum, Tate and the Musée d'Orsay, see where to see Monet's paintings and the Claude Monet page.