Red Boats, Argenteuil

For most of the 1870s, Monet lived in Argenteuil, a town on the Seine only seventeen miles from Paris and accessible to the city by train. He often worked outdoors in his own boat and painted this basin several times, though the lower vantage point of this scene suggests a perspective from the shoreline. Eliminating the factory smokestacks that were in fact visible at this location, Monet instead highlights the area’s picturesque and recreational aspects, including the boat rental area on the left. Impressionist painters like Monet deliberately eschewed the finished structure and line of academic painting, but the irresolution of this painting has led to its occasional categorization as a “study.” As revealed in x-radiographs, the artist reworked the composition in several areas, removing a sixth paddling duck on the left, for example, by painting over it. The band of lavender brushstrokes along the horizon line is the site of a similar revision.