<b>Claude Monet </b>
(1840 - 1926)

Why travel far in search of inspiration, when beauty lies right before your eyes? In Vétheuil, Claude Monet needed only to step down from his garden to find himself on the banks of the Seine. The river bends gracefully at the foot of the village church.
Across the water, on the opposite bank, he could see the houses of Lavacourt—a small hamlet clinging to the tip of the peninsula formed by the meander. The riverbed is scattered with little islands, shaded by willows. Monet would set up his easel here, perhaps working from his studio-boat, moored at the end of the garden. From the bank today, though, one cannot glimpse the precise angle he chose: the river curving into the distance, with the bell tower of Saint-Martin de La Garenne rising above the horizon. To rediscover that viewpoint, one has to venture out onto the water.

Monet first painted this landscape in 1878. He returned to it the following year with a series of four views, and again in 1880 with this large canvas (Lavacourt, Claude Monet, 1880, Dallas Museum of Art, Texas). According to the catalogue raisonné, although it shows a summer scene, the work (100 × 150 cm) was executed as early as March, based on the smaller canvases of 1879.

Monet sets the horizon at the center of the canvas. The open sweep of the foreground is echoed by the wide sky, dappled with clouds and mirrored in the shimmering water. It is morning: the light is gentle, subdued. Sunlight strikes the facades of the houses, whose reflections ripple across the river, making the colors dance. 

The Seine at Lavacourt
1880
Oil on canvas
98.43 × 149.23 cm 
Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, US
https://dma.org/art/collection/object/5320662