MONET, Claude
(b. 1840, Paris, d. 1926, Giverny)

Regatta at Argenteuil

1872
Oil on canvas, 48 x 75 cm
Musée d'Orsay, Paris

The small town of Argenteuil had become famous because of painters, like Monet, who lived there from 1871 to 1878. One of Monet's early work from this period, Regatta at Argenteuil, was once in the Caillebotte collection.

The main motif of the picture is the water. It is the element that corresponded most closely to the Impressionists' view of the world because it contained a multitude of visual images of the world in its countless reflections, and because at the same time it could be interpreted as being symbolic of the tendency to drift.




© Web Gallery of Art, created by Emil Krén and Daniel Marx.