Springtime

Springtime from around 1872 at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore was painted at Argenteuil in the first year of Monet's most productive residential period — the year of Impression, Sunrise, of the earliest Argenteuil river paintings, of his most sustained plein-air work. The figure seated beneath a flowering tree — almost certainly Camille in the garden at their Argenteuil house — belongs to the series of garden figure paintings that occupied Monet alongside his river and boat subjects throughout the Argenteuil years. Spring blossom provided one of his most beloved chromatic subjects: the pale flowers against blue sky, the specific quality of the spring light filtered through flowering branches, the contrast between the controlled garden environment and the open sky above. The Walters Art Museum, which built a strong collection of French painting from the Impressionist and Post-Impressionist periods, holds this canvas as an example of Monet's most classically Impressionist period — the Argenteuil figure paintings that his generation of painters recognized as definitive achievements of the open-air approach.

The figure is painted with light, flickering touches that give fabric and foliage equal visual weight — Camille's dress no more or less resolved than the blossoms above her. Spring greens and whites dominate, with pink accents in the flowering branches. Cast shadow across the figure is rendered in cool grey-lavender rather than brown.