Spring

What you are looking at

A canopy of blossoming fruit trees fills the upper two-thirds of the canvas, their dark, twisting trunks and branches threaded through a haze of white, cream and pale yellow flowers. Through the gaps the sky shows in patches of soft lilac-blue. Below, the orchard grass is a vivid spring green, crossed by long violet-blue shadows cast by the trunks. Behind it runs a pale fence or screen of reeds, and beyond that more trees in bloom and a glimpse of green fields.

In the lower center, small in the scene, two young women sit in the grass. One, at left, wears a white dress patterned with blue shadow and a straw sunhat with a pink ribbon; she sits with her back to us. The other, at right, wears a dark dress and a straw hat and bends forward over something in her lap, perhaps a book or sewing. Neither face is shown.

The trees are the real subject. Monet paints the blossom in thick, short dabs that sit on top of the branches, and lets the trunks wander in curving, almost calligraphic dark lines. The main trunk at left of center forks and twists like a figure in motion. Sunlight flickers across the women's dresses in the same broken touches as the flowers, so they seem to belong to the orchard rather than sit in front of it.

Giverny, 1886

Monet had moved to Giverny in 1883 with Alice Hoschedé and their eight children, his two sons and her six. By 1886 the household's daughters were grown or nearly grown, and they often modeled for him in the garden and fields; the two figures here are probably members of the family, though they are not securely identified. That summer he painted Suzanne Hoschedé with a parasol, outdoors near Giverny, in Woman with a Parasol, Turned to the Left and its pair.

Earlier that spring he had traveled to Holland and painted Tulip Fields in Holland. Back home, he painted the Giverny orchards in flower in several canvases. This one is distinguished by its figures, which turn a study of blossom into a quiet scene of leisure.

How it was painted

The canvas is a standard size, about 65 by 81 centimeters. Monet works the blossom over a blue ground of sky, building up the white and cream in raised, separate touches so that the canopy has a physical density. The grass is laid in with long, horizontal strokes of saturated green, and the shadows are added on top in violet and blue. The figures are among the most freely painted passages, their dresses a few strokes of white and dark. It is a picture made in the open air, on a sunny day, and it looks it. Look at the light itself: the sun is high and behind the trees, so the blossom is lit from above and glows, while the shadows on the grass stretch toward us. The women sit just where shade meets sun, the white dress catching it and the dark dress absorbing it.

Spring in Monet's work

Blossom was a favorite motif because of the delicate color contrasts and changing light it offered. Compare the earlier Springtime of 1872 in Baltimore, where Camille reads in dappled shade, and the Vétheuil Plum Trees in Bloom of 1879. The 1886 picture is looser than either, its figures smaller, and the orchard itself more the protagonist.

Meaning

The picture belongs to a long tradition of springtime scenes, from medieval calendars to the fêtes galantes of the 18th century, in which young people enjoy the season of renewal. Claude Monet strips that tradition of allegory. There is no courtship and no story, just two people resting in the shade on a fine spring day, and the shadows on the grass marking the hour.

Where to see it

The painting is in the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, England, which entered it in 1953 and also owns a canvas from Monet's Poplars series. For other museums, see where to see Monet's paintings.