Wiese in Giverny

In the spring of 1894 the walls of Monet's studio at Giverny were lined with Rouen Cathedral. He had painted the west front around 30 times over two campaigns in 1892 and 1893, carted the canvases home, and then spent two winters reworking them indoors before he would let anyone see them. This meadow is what he walked out to paint in the middle of that, a field with no architecture in it at all, and it is one of four he made of the same ground that spring. He signed it in blue in the lower left and added the year, 94. Twenty of the cathedrals finally went on show in Paris in May 1895. The meadow stayed in private hands until 1954, when it came to Princeton under the will of Henry K. Dick, a graduate of the class of 1909.