The Turkeys

The Turkeys was painted in 1877 at the château de Rottembourg, owned by Ernest Hoschedé, the department store magnate who was among Monet's most important early patrons. Hoschedé commissioned several decorative panels for his château, and this canvas is among the most unusual in Monet's output — a large pastoral subject with white turkeys in a formal park landscape that deliberately competes with the seventeenth-century French tradition of château decoration. The commission reflects the way wealthy collectors in the 1870s wanted Impressionist work that could also function as traditional decorative painting.

The white turkeys provide strong light accents in the composition, their feather masses rendered with careful attention to the way white reflects ambient colour. The parkland setting is handled broadly, with the formal garden architecture providing geometric contrast. The large scale required Monet to organise his typically atmospheric touch into a more structurally coherent composition.