The Seine near Giverny

The Seine near Giverny from 1885 at the Denver Art Museum is among the earliest views Monet made of the river immediately outside his property — the Seine as it flowed between Giverny and the surrounding water meadows, its banks lined with willows and poplars, its surface a mirror for the sky. Having spent a decade at Argenteuil painting the broad open Seine and three years at Vétheuil documenting the more intimate upper reaches, his arrival at Giverny gave him a river of similar character but different geography and atmosphere. The Epte and its confluence with the Seine near Giverny created a more complex water landscape than the simple broad reach of the Argenteuil Seine, and the branching channels, backwaters, and reflected willows would eventually become the subject of the water garden paintings. The Denver Art Museum, which holds important collections of both European and American art, acquired this early Giverny river view as a document of the period immediately preceding Monet's most celebrated serial campaigns — the years when the visual material for those campaigns was being accumulated.

Monet builds the Seine riverside through his characteristic interaction of bank vegetation, water surface, and sky reflections — the river's reflective capacity creating the doubled, shimmering environment that was his primary concern. His brushwork varies between the solid bank elements and the more fluid water surface, and his palette for the 1885 Seine subjects shows the river's characteristic grey-blue against the greens and yellows of early summer vegetation.