The Seine, from Chantemesle's Heights

The Seine, from Chantemesle's Heights from 1881 at the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rouen was painted as Monet was entering his final year at Vétheuil and beginning to think about moving — first to Poissy (which he disliked) and eventually to Giverny in 1883. Chantemesle, across the Seine valley from La Roche-Guyon, offered elevated panoramic views of the river as it curved through the limestone bluffs, a vantage point quite different from the intimate riverside perspectives of the Argenteuil and Vétheuil paintings. By 1881 Monet had explored the Seine valley around Vétheuil exhaustively — the village from the river, the ice floes of 1880, the surrounding hillsides and fields — and the elevated panoramic view from Chantemesle represents a search for new compositional possibilities as his interest in the immediate Vétheuil environment was waning. Sisley, working in Moret-sur-Loing and the surrounding Seine valley in the same years, was exploring comparable elevated river views with a more methodical atmospheric precision.

An elevated viewpoint creates a panoramic composition with the Seine winding through the valley below. Warm summer foliage and the silvery river are handled in broad zones of color. Sky and distant hills recede through tonal modulation; brushwork is varied from controlled distance strokes to freer marks in the foreground.