The Plain of Sannois at Argenteuil

What you are looking at

We stand on a hillside. A rough path of pale, rutted earth runs down through long, dry grass in the foreground, between two clumps of dark bushes: a spreading, brownish shrub at left and a darker evergreen with a rounded crown at right. Beyond them the land drops away and the plain opens out, a wide, flat expanse of fields and villages in soft blue-greys and greens, dissolving into haze toward a low horizon.

Near the center a single thin church spire rises from a village on the plain. Two tiny figures walk on the path where it meets the bushes, the only people in the picture. The upper half of the canvas is sky, a pale grey-white cover of cloud broken into long horizontal streaks with small gaps of light. Monet signed and dated the canvas at lower right, "72 Claude Monet."

Claude Monet painted this view in 1872, his first full year at Argenteuil. Its French title, Vue de plaine à Argenteuil, coteaux de Sannois, places it on the slopes of the Sannois hills, north of the town, looking out over the plain. The canvas measures 53 by 72 centimeters and is number 220 in Wildenstein's catalogue.

Where and when

Argenteuil, on the Seine northwest of Paris, was Monet's home from December 1871 to 1878, and while the river and its boats became his best-known subjects, he also walked up into the surrounding countryside. North of the town the ground rises to the hills of Sannois and Orgemont, with windmills and vineyards, and from their slopes the plain of the Seine spreads toward Paris. See Monet at Argenteuil.

The painting has an unusual history. It is one of the works recorded as Musées Nationaux Récupération (MNR): paintings found in Germany after the Second World War, returned to France, and not yet restored to an owner. According to the French government's Rose-Valland database, the canvas passed through the Allied collecting point at Baden-Baden and was entrusted to the national museums in 1951; a stencil reading "MNR 855" is on the back. Earlier titles recorded for it include Pochade à Argenteuil and Les Côteaux de Sannois. MNR works are listed publicly so that the heirs of their original owners can claim them.

How it was painted

This is one of Monet's quietest pictures. There are no boats and no landmark except the distant spire; the subject is space and weather. Look at how he builds depth: warm yellow-ochre grass in the foreground, darker greens in the bushes, cool blue and grey in the distance, the colors cooling as they recede, as they do in real air. The path, laid in with a few strokes of pale earth and darker ruts, leads the eye down and out toward the plain.

The sky is painted in long, flat strokes laid side by side, with little modeling, and the small breaks of brightness are dabs of thicker white. It is an overcast day, and Monet records its even, diffused light without sun or strong shadow to dramatize it. The foreground grass is the most textured passage, a mass of upright flicks of yellow, green and brown. The two walkers are no more than a pair of dark upright strokes, yet they give the hillside its scale and make the plain beyond feel vast.

The motif and its siblings

Monet's early Argenteuil pictures include several views of the countryside around the town rather than the busy riverfront. They show his debt to the Barbizon painters and to Camille Corot and Charles-François Daubigny, who painted flat, open landscapes under big skies. Compare Carrières-Saint-Denis of 1872, the Fields of Bezons in Berlin and A Field of Poppies of 1873; on the river, The Basin at Argenteuil and Argenteuil belong to the same year.

Where to see it

The painting is held by the Musée d'Orsay, Paris, but is not always on display. See Monet at the Musée d'Orsay, and for the artist, Claude Monet.