View to the plain of Argenteuil

View to the Plain of Argenteuil (1872) at the Musée d'Orsay shows the wide agricultural plain behind the town of Argenteuil from an elevated viewpoint, expanding Monet's Argenteuil repertoire beyond the riverside and harbor to the farming landscape behind the town. In 1872 the plain was still a patchwork of fields growing vegetables and flowers for the Paris market, with suburban villas beginning to encroach. This open-sky composition with a high-horizon foreground strip and enormous cloud-filled sky is one of the most spatially expansive of all the Argenteuil paintings.

The sky occupies approximately two-thirds of the canvas, an unusually high proportion that emphasizes the expansive horizon of the plain. Clouds are painted with varied, animated strokes of blue, grey, and white. The flat plain below is broadly handled with warm summer tones of gold and green.