Morgendunst

In the first weeks of 1893 the Seine froze, then began to break up, and Monet went down to the bank at Giverny to paint the ice drifting past toward the village of Bennecourt. The thaw gave him only a few days on the spot, so he worked quickly and finished the canvases indoors afterwards. That cold snap produced 13 pictures. Philadelphia dates this one 1894, a year later than the ice itself, which fits a canvas carried back to the studio. Almost the whole painting is held inside a narrow band of greys and pale pinks. The trees on the far bank barely keep their shape, and the firmest things in it are the flat white plates of ice riding the current.