Springtime

Monet painted Springtime around 1872, placing the figure of Camille beneath a flowering tree in what appears to be a domestic garden — likely at Argenteuil, where the couple had settled the previous year. The canvas belongs to the productive early Argenteuil period when Monet was intensively exploring outdoor figure painting, the problem of rendering sunlight on skin and fabric without the academic smoothness he had consciously rejected. The loose, almost sketch-like quality of the foliage and figure connects it to contemporaneous work by Renoir, who shared Monet's interest in dissolving form in natural light.

The figure is painted with light, flickering touches that give fabric and foliage equal visual weight — Camille's dress no more or less resolved than the blossoms above her. Spring greens and whites dominate, with pink accents in the flowering branches. Cast shadow across the figure is rendered in cool grey-lavender rather than brown.