Stories
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Arrival of the Normandy Train, Gare Saint-Lazare, 1877: Steam Turned Into Weather Under Glass
Arrival of the Normandy Train, Gare Saint-Lazare is an oil on canvas Claude Monet painted in 1877, now held by the Art Institute of…
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Autumn on the Seine, Argenteuil
Autumn on a river lasts about three weeks. The leaves turn, and for a short stretch the bank runs gold and rust and copper,…
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Bridge at Argenteuil on a Gray Day
There is no sun in this picture and that is the point. The river is pewter. The sky is a low lid. The far…
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Bridge over a Pond of Water Lilies, 1899: The Bridge, the Planting and the Water
Bridge over a Pond of Water Lilies is an oil on canvas Claude Monet painted in 1899, a vertical canvas measuring 36 1/2 by…
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Camille in the Garden at Argenteuil, 1876: Among Hollyhocks
In Claude Monet’s Camille Monet in the Garden at Argenteuil, a woman in a pale blue-grey dress stands at the left beside a tree.…
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Garden at Sainte-Adresse: Four Figures Between Flowers and Sea
Four figures occupy the garden terrace in Claude Monet’s Garden at Sainte-Adresse. Two stand near the railing, while two sit closer to the foreground.…
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Gardener’s House at Antibes: The Light That Nearly Beat Him
By eleven in the morning at Antibes in early spring the light has stopped behaving the way northern light behaves. It does not describe…
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Gondola in Venice
A lagoon gives a painter two light sources and no solid ground. One comes down from the sky, thin and silvered in October. The…
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Grainstack at Giverny: Why He Chose the Least Interesting Thing in the Field
A field at the end of a working day in late summer. The stubble is sharp and pale and still holds the heat of…
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Grainstacks, in Bright Sunlight
Midday is supposed to be the worst possible hour for a landscape painter. The sun is overhead, shadows shrink to almost nothing, form flattens…
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Haystack near Giverny
Wet grass at seven in the morning soaks a man to the knee within twenty paces. Add the weight of a canvas, a box…
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Haystacks (Effect of Snow and Sun), 1891: Light on Straw and Violet Shadows
Haystacks (Effect of Snow and Sun) is an oil on canvas Claude Monet painted in 1891, now held by The Metropolitan Museum of Art…
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Haystacks, End of Summer
Go and stand next to one of these things and the first surprise is the size. A grainstack of this kind is not a…
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Haystacks: Snow Effect
Cold is the part nobody paints. It is in this picture anyway, in a way you can feel before you can explain it.
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Houses of Parliament, London, 1900-01: The Fog He Came Back For
He wanted the fog. That is the part people find hardest to believe. Visitors to London in 1900 complained about the winter air as…
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Low Tide at Pourville: Painting a Landscape the Sea Was About to Take Back
When the tide goes out at Pourville it takes the sea a long way with it and leaves behind something that is neither land…
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Palm Trees at Bordighera: Fronds Below the Alps
Claude Monet painted Palm Trees at Bordighera in 1884. Dark palm fronds spread across the foreground, with taller crowns rising into a view of…
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Poplars, Pink Effect
The wind has dropped. That is the first thing to know about this canvas, and everything else follows from it.
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Rouen Cathedral, End of the Day
The last light of a day does not fade evenly off a building. It climbs. The street goes blue first, then the portals, then…
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Rouen Cathedral, Portal and Tower d’Albane, Midday
Noon is the enemy of anyone who draws with light. Early and late, the sun stands low and rakes across a building, digging out…
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Rouen Cathedral, Portal, Cloudy Weather
Imagine a small rented room on an upper floor, a chair, a stack of canvases against the wall, and a window filled entirely by…
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Rouen Cathedral, Portal, Morning Light
Picture the studio rather than the cathedral. It is 1894, and the walls of the room are lined with paintings of the same building.…
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Rouen Cathedral: The Portal (Sunlight), 1894: Pale Stone Under a Blue Sky
Claude Monet’s Rouen Cathedral: The Portal (Sunlight) fills a tall canvas with pale carved stone. Blue sky opens above the central facade, between its…
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Seashore and Cliffs of Pourville in the Morning
Wind is the enemy nobody mentions. A stretched canvas on an easel is a sail, and on an exposed cliff path in the morning…
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Snow Effect at Argenteuil: Nothing in This Painting Is White
Snow has been down for days and the town has stopped looking like itself. The road is a soft trough between banks. Roofs have…
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Sunrise (Marine)
To paint a sunrise you have to lose the night. That means the walk down to the water in the dark, the cold that…
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The Beach at Sainte-Adresse: The Summer He Could Not Afford to Leave
Come down onto the shingle at Sainte-Adresse on a grey morning and the first thing you notice is the sound. The Channel does not…
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The Bodmer Oak, 1865: Branches Above a Russet Forest Floor
A broad oak spreads across Claude Monet’s The Bodmer Oak, Fontainebleau Forest. Its trunk stands to the right of centre, dividing into limbs that…
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The Bridge at Argenteuil
A flat-bottomed boat with a small cabin sits moored on the river, and a man is working in it. He has a canvas propped…
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The Manneporte (Etretat), 1883: Two Figures Beneath the Arch
Two tiny figures appear on the rocks beneath the left side of the arch in Claude Monet's The Manneporte (Etretat). They are easy to…
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The Nets in Pourville
The wind on that coast does not gust; it leans. It comes off the sea in a steady push that flattens the grass on…
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The Water Lilies: Clear Morning with Willows
The first hour of light at Giverny is cold. Mist sits on the surface of the pond in a low sheet, the willows drip…
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The Water Lilies: Green Reflections
Stand at the edge of a still pond in the middle of a hot afternoon and look straight down. There is a moment, once…
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The Water Lilies: Morning
Most paintings are objects you look at. This one was designed to be a place you stand inside. The Morning panels are part of…
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The Water Lilies: Setting Sun
The last twenty minutes of daylight are the cruellest thing a landscape painter can choose to work on. The colour arrives all at once,…
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The Water Lilies: The Two Willows
In the winter of 1920 the largest room at Giverny was not built for living in. It was a shed with a glass roof…
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The Water Lilies: Tree Reflections
Late in the day, when the sun has dropped behind the trees but the sky above is still bright, a pond does something strange.…
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Venice, Palazzo Dario, 1908: Marble Above Blue-Green Water
Claude Monet’s Venice, Palazzo Dario brings the palace facade close to the water. Pale pink and cream walls fill the upper part of the…
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Water Lilies
Stand in front of this canvas and try to work out where you are standing. There is no bank. There is no far shore,…
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Water Lilies (1908)
Picture a flat-bottomed boat tied at the edge of a pond on a July morning, and a man of sixty-seven sitting in it with…
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Water Lilies (1916)
In 1916 an old man had a building put up in his garden. It was large, plain and industrial, glazed along one side, and…
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Water Lilies (Agapanthus): A Pond He Built, Then Painted for Thirty Years
Stand at the edge of a still pond in the middle of the morning and look straight down into it. You lose your footing…
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Water Lilies (Nympheas)
Ask what a pond looks like and most people describe a thing with edges: a bank, some reeds, trees behind, sky above. Now try…
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Water Lilies at the Met: Red Flowers Across a Dark Pond
Monet's Water Lilies, dated 1916-1919, shows blue-green pads and red flowers against dark water crossed by pale reflections. The pond fills the picture from…
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Water Lily Pond
Stand at the edge of a pond in high summer and look straight down into it, and you will find that you cannot decide…
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Waterloo Bridge, Sunlight Effect: Violet Arches in the Haze
A long bridge crosses Claude Monet’s Waterloo Bridge, Sunlight Effect, its arches painted in violet and blue. Small marks of yellow, red and pale…
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Wind Effect, Row of Poplars
There is a kind of morning on the Epte when the air cannot make up its mind. The river lies flat and slow against…
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Windmills near Zaandam
Imagine arriving in a country where the horizon is a ruled line. No hills to interrupt it, no valley to close it off, nothing…
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Woman with a Parasol, Facing Left: The Face He Chose Not to Paint
Stand at the bottom of a small rise on a windy day and look up at somebody standing on top of it. You will…
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Woman with a Parasol, Madame Monet and Her Son: Camille High on the Slope, Jean Low in the Grass
Claude Monet painted Woman with a Parasol, Madame Monet and Her Son in 1875, an oil on canvas measuring 100 x 81 cm and…
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