View of Argenteuil in the Snow

What you are looking at

We look down from a height over a suburban corner of Argenteuil buried in snow. A lane runs diagonally from the foreground toward the upper left, bordered by a wooden picket fence and frosted bushes. Small dark figures walk along it, some under black umbrellas, others with heads bent.

Beyond the fence lie snow-covered gardens and a low red shed with a white roof. Behind them stand a cluster of houses, a tall building with a stepped gable and, at the far right, a factory with a tall chimney, all set against a ridge of snowy hills. The sky is pale and soft, with a hint of blue.

It is still snowing, or has only just stopped: the umbrellas are up, and the air is thick and white.

The winter of 1874–75

Claude Monet lived in Argenteuil from late 1871 to early 1878. The winter of 1874–75 was unusually snowy, and he painted some eighteen snow scenes of the town that season, most of them within walking distance of his house near the Boulevard Saint-Denis. This canvas is catalogued by Wildenstein as W.358. The town and its river through the seasons are surveyed on Monet at Argenteuil.

The high viewpoint is unusual for these pictures, which are mostly at street level, like Boulevard Saint-Denis, Argenteuil, in Winter. It lets Monet show the town as it really was: not a picturesque village but a mix of gardens, villas, sheds and, on the right, the chimney of a factory. Argenteuil was growing fast as an industrial suburb of Paris, and Monet includes that without comment.

How it was painted

Monet's snow is never just white. Here it is lilac and blue in shadow, cream and pink where light falls, and gray in the trodden lane. The fence is the strongest drawing in the picture: a long line of thin, dark vertical strokes that zigzags down the slope and leads the eye into depth. The bushes in the foreground are scribbled in lavender and white, the frost picked out in short dabs.

Look for the walkers. There are about a dozen, each made of a few strokes, yet the black umbrellas tilt against the weather, and two figures at the lower right seem to pause by the fence. Snow scenes with umbrella-carrying figures were a favorite subject of the Japanese woodblock prints Monet collected, and the high, tilted view also recalls those prints.

The roofs carry the color. The red of the shed, the pink brick of the houses and the ocher of the gabled building are all softened by a skin of white, so color glows through rather than sitting on top. The signature, "Claude Monet," is painted in dark red at the lower left, the same color as the shed roof.

The Argenteuil snow scenes and how this one differs

That winter Monet painted the streets, the railway and the riverbank under snow: the train crossing the snowy valley, the entrance to the Grande Rue, the Boulevard de Pontoise. Most of them place us in the street among the walkers. This one lifts us above them, so the town becomes a pattern of fences, roofs and paths.

The Nelson-Atkins owns a second Argenteuil snow scene from the same winter (W.349), a ground-level view, and the pair makes a useful comparison of near and far. Seen together, they show how much the choice of viewpoint changes the mood: at ground level the snow is close, wet and heavy underfoot; from above it becomes a light, even blanket that unifies the whole town. Monet had painted snow before, most famously in The Magpie, but never so many times in a single season.

Where to see it

The painting belongs to the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City (44-41/3). For other museums where Monet's Argenteuil winters can be seen, consult Where to See Monet's Paintings.