The Magpie

The Magpie from 1868–69 at the Musée d'Orsay is one of Monet's most ambitious early snow paintings and a crucial step in his development of the chromatic argument that snow is colored rather than white. Painted near Étretat in the winter of 1868–69 and submitted to the Salon of 1869 (where it was rejected), the canvas shows the Norman countryside under heavy snow, the lone magpie perched on a gate the only animate presence in a scene of absolute winter stillness. The blue and violet shadows cast by fence rails and hedge on the snow surface were the painting's most radical element — directly contradicting the academic convention of warm brown shadows — and the rejection by the Salon jury can be partly attributed to this chromatic heterodoxy. Monet was not alone in pursuing cool snow shadows: Sisley and Pissarro were developing similar convictions based on the same observation that snow reflects sky color, but none of the three had yet made the systematic argument with such formal clarity. The Orsay's holding of this work — one of its most popular images — gives the national museum a work that is both historically significant as a pre-Impressionist landmark and visually compelling in its own right.

Snow is built up with a range of cool tones — pale lavender, grey-blue, near-white — with shadows falling in distinct parallel shapes cast by fence rails. The palette rejects warm ochre shadows entirely. The single magpie on the gate provides scale and a dark accent that throws the surrounding brightness into relief.