Landschaft bei Port-Villez

In the last days of April 1883 Monet moved his household into a rented house at Giverny, on the Seine, the place he would keep for the rest of his life and eventually fill with water lilies. That same week his old friend and ally Édouard Manet died in Paris, and Monet went up to help carry the coffin. Port-Villez sits just across the river from Giverny, a low hill above the water, and this is one of the views Monet painted as he was learning his new surroundings that year. The Seine takes up much of the canvas, its surface broken into the flecked reflections he was becoming known for, with the grasses of the near bank stirring in front.