Title: Printemps à Giverny, effet d’après-midi
Artist: Claude Monet (French, 1840-1926)
Medium: oil on canvas
Dimensions: 60.4 x 81.4 cm
Date Created: 1885
Description
Late spring, 1885, Giverny. Two years after moving here with his family, Monet had become profoundly immersed in the astonishingly rich landscape surrounding his new home, making it nearly the sole subject of his art. He once wrote to his beloved Alice, “Even if painting in distant places pleases me, my heart remains in Giverny.”
Poetry was close at hand. Walking west along the Chemin du Roy with his canvas and easel, the artist came upon a row of fruit trees in full bloom swaying beside the road. Behind them, the land sloped up to the village road where red-roofed houses clustered beside the medieval church of Sainte Radegonde, its steeple etched against the vast sky. This scene transformed into a veritable manifesto of the pictorial possibilities the Giverny countryside bestowed upon this quintessential plein-air painter—utterly in his element, happily near home.
Monet painted two views looking north across this orchard. As journalist Georges Jeanniot noted, he often worked on multiple canvases simultaneously, switching them as the light changed. The present Printemps à Giverny was painted in the afternoon, with the south-west façades of the church and houses illuminated by the sun. A nearly cloudless sky holds faint touches of pink heralding dusk, while golden light rakes across the bank of creamy blossoms in the foreground.
Having lived in Giverny for just over two years, Monet was deeply rooted. He wrote eagerly, “Once settled, I hope to produce masterpieces, because I like the countryside very much.” Initially focusing on familiar Seine views, from 1884 he ranged widely over meadows, marshes, winding roads and rolling hills in all seasons and weather. As Andrew Forge observed, he watched with a hunter’s concentration for the precise moment light shimmered on grass, willow leaves, or water.
Image Download
Image Dimensions: 3200 x 2370 pixels
Image Size: 1.36 MB
Image Format: JPG
Print Resolution: 300 dpi
Download Format: ZIP Archive
License: Public Domain, Free for Commercial Use
