Row of Poplars in Autumn

Row of Poplars in Autumn (Rangée de peupliers en automne) is a painting from Claude Monet's 1891 series of poplars on the river Epte near Giverny, catalogued by Wildenstein as no. 1293. It is a tall upright canvas, signed and dated Claude Monet 91 at the lower right, and it is in a private collection.

What you're looking at

A line of seven or eight tall poplars marches across the canvas from left to right, close to us on the riverbank. Their trunks are painted in orange, coral and pink, clearly sunlit, with clumps of green leaves climbing up them. The crowns, which rise toward the upper right, are a dense mass of yellow, gold, olive and ochre, with a few touches of blue and violet in the shadows. The row steps up from left to right, so that the tallest trees are at the right edge and the sky opens wide at the upper left.

That sky is a soft, even gray, with a little blue and lilac in it: an overcast day, or a thin haze. Against it the gold of the leaves and the orange of the trunks glow. Behind the main row, lower trees and bushes in yellow-green and orange fill the space at the level of the trunks' midpoints.

At the bottom, a strip of grass in red, orange and green marks the bank, and below it the river reflects the trunks as long orange and green verticals, broken by short horizontal strokes of cream and yellow. The signature is at the lower right in red.

The Poplars series

In 1891 Monet painted a single line of poplars on the Epte near Limetz, a few kilometers from his house, working from his boat. When the trees were sold for timber that summer, he paid the merchant to postpone cutting them until he had finished. This canvas is one of the close views of the row, like Poplars on the Banks of the Epte, Autumn and Poplars on the Banks of the River Epte in Philadelphia.

How it was painted

The tall format lets Monet show the full height of the trees. The trunks are long vertical strokes; the foliage is built in dense, short touches of warm color over a lighter ground; the gray sky is laid in smoothly so that it reads as flat and calm behind the busy leaves. Monet sets the warmest colors, orange and gold, against the coolest, the gray-lilac sky.

How this version differs

Compared with Poplars on the Banks of the Epte, Autumn, which is deeper and redder under a pink sky, this canvas is golden under gray. It is lighter and more sunlit than the overcast Poplars near Giverny, Overcast Weather, and much warmer than the wind-blown Wind Effect, Series of The Poplars. 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 canvases from the series in public collections, see where to see Monet's paintings and the Claude Monet page.