The Road in Front of Saint-Siméon Farm in Winter

Claude Monet painted The Road in Front of Saint-Siméon Farm in Winter, catalogued in French as Environs de Honfleur, neige, during the snowy winter of 1867 near Honfleur, on the Normandy coast. A snow-covered road climbs past an orchard of frosted trees toward a pair of low, snow-roofed farm buildings, under a heavy gray-green sky. The canvas, about 81 by 102 centimeters, is one of his largest early snow scenes. It belongs to the Department of Paintings of the Louvre, which received it in 1977.

What you're looking at

The lower half of the picture is a single sweep of snow. It rises from the bottom left in a broad slope and levels off toward the right, where the road continues past the farm. Monet paints it in thick, creamy whites shaded with gray-blue and lilac, with a few dark tufts of hedge breaking through at the left edge. There are no figures, no cart and no footprints, only the faint lines of the road's ruts.

Across the middle runs a band of trees. At left, apple trees with low, spreading branches carry snow along every limb, drawn in dark brown with thick white on top. Behind them taller trees, bare and lacy, are painted in blue-gray and violet, fading into mist on the right. At the far right stand two cottages with snow-heavy roofs, their walls a dull brown, half hidden behind a hedge. Above, the sky is a dense, uniform gray-green with hints of yellow near the horizon, the color of more snow to come. A single dark bird flies near the top center. The signature is at lower left.

Honfleur and the Saint-Siméon farm

The Ferme Saint-Siméon was an inn on the hillside above Honfleur, where painters had gathered since the 1850s: Eugène Boudin, Johan Barthold Jongkind, Gustave Courbet and the young Monet among them. Monet painted around it in several seasons in the 1860s. In the winter of 1866–67 he stayed in the area and produced a group of ambitious snow scenes. A letter from the local painter Alexandre Dubourg mentions the snow scenes he was painting there in 1867.

Related pictures include A Cart on the Snowy Road at Honfleur in the Musée d'Orsay, which shows the same road with a horse and cart, and Road by Saint-Siméon Farm in Winter, a smaller view with walkers, as well as the slightly later The Magpie. The Normandy coast pictures are gathered on Étretat and the Normandy Coast.

How it was painted

Snow was a demanding subject for a young painter in the 1860s, and Monet treated it as a problem of color. The whites are never pure. On the sunless slope they turn cool blue and violet, and where the light falls they warm to cream. Monet lays them on thickly with a broad, stiff brush, so the snow has real weight on the canvas. The trees are drawn more carefully, with a dark line and a stripe of white along each branch, a method he would loosen in later years.

The composition is bold for its date: an almost empty foreground of snow and a low band of interest across the middle. It owes something to Courbet's snow scenes but is cooler and brighter. The large size suggests Monet saw it as a serious exhibition picture, not just a sketch.

Ownership and where to see it

According to French sources, the painting was sold at auction in Paris in 1900 and later acquired by the expert André Schoeller. It was given to the French state in 1961, subject to the donor keeping it during their lifetime, and entered the national collection in 1977 with the inventory number RF 1961-60. It is listed among the Louvre's paintings; works of this period from the national collections are generally shown at the Musée d'Orsay, so check the museums' websites for where it currently hangs. For other early Monet paintings in Paris, see Monet at the Musée d'Orsay and where to see Monet's paintings.