Häuser in Argenteuil

Monet painted this in 1873 in Argenteuil, a town on the Seine just downriver from Paris that the railway had turned into a fast-growing suburb. What he chose to paint is telling. He skipped the picturesque village for a row of brand-new speculative houses, the kind thrown up for commuters, with a meadow of red poppies running up to their garden fences. He treats the cheap walls and red roof tiles with the same care as the sky and the flowers. Years later the Berlin museum's director, Hugo von Tschudi, bought it for the national collection, praising Monet's knack for making an unpromising subject glow. Buying a French Impressionist for a German state museum was bold enough then to cause a quarrel.