Maisons au bord de la route

Claude Monet's 'Maisons au bord de la route' (Houses along the Road, 1885) is one of his Norman subjects from the period of his sustained investigation of the landscape around Giverny and the Normandy countryside. The houses along a rural Norman road gave him a subject that combined the architectural element of the vernacular Norman farmhouse with the road as a compositional device and the landscape as the atmospheric context. His engagement with the Norman countryside extended beyond the famous riverscapes and garden to these more prosaic rural observations.

Monet renders the roadside houses with his characteristic atmospheric approach — the specific quality of the Norman light on the traditional farmhouse buildings and the road surface creating the composition's tonal unity. His brushwork adapts to the specific qualities of the subject: the relatively solid forms of the houses given more structured handling than his atmospheric sky or water subjects, while the surrounding vegetation receives the broken, flickering touch he used for natural forms in light.