Banks of the Seine, Vétheuil

Claude Monet painted this view in 1880 while living at Vétheuil, a village on the Seine northwest of Paris. Broad, broken strokes spread pale blues, greens, yellows, and whites across the canvas, translating the changing surfaces of water, sky, and vegetation into a unified field of color. The painting belongs to Monet's sustained exploration of the Seine and its surroundings during his Vétheuil years. Signed and dated in red at the lower right, it entered the National Gallery of Art through Chester Dale's 1963 bequest.