Spring (Fruit Trees in Bloom)

Spring (Fruit Trees in Bloom) from 1873 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art captures an orchard at Argenteuil in the particular luminosity of Norman spring — white and pink blossom against pale blue sky, the light not yet the heavy warmth of summer but the bright, clear freshness of early April. Monet painted orchards in bloom throughout his Norman career, finding in the seasonal explosion of fruit tree flowering a subject that combined the chromatic delicacy of spring with the agricultural traditions of the Norman landscape. The 1873 date places this canvas at the height of the Argenteuil period's most productive year; Monet was painting with exceptional freedom and variety, the same year as the Impression, Sunrise and the Boulevard des Capucines views. The Metropolitan Museum's acquisition of this canvas placed it in the American institution with the greatest total concentration of French Impressionist painting, where it can be understood within the full context of Monet's Argenteuil-period diversity of subject and approach.

Monet applies paint with a loaded brush in short, separate strokes that dissolve any boundary between blossoms and the sky beyond. The pale blue sky and white blossom clusters are distinguished primarily through hue rather than value, creating the luminous openness that would become a hallmark of his outdoor work.