Die Kirche von Vétheuil

The winter of 1878 into 1879 was one of the hardest of the century in France, with the Seine freezing over. Monet had just moved his family to Vétheuil, a small village downstream from Paris, and he was close to broke. That cold is what this painting is made of. The village church rises through a grey, wet haze, its stone dark against snow that has settled on every roof and along the riverbank below. He painted it out in the freezing air, the strokes short and quick to catch the light before it shifted. His wife Camille was gravely ill through that year and would die at Vétheuil in September, a few months after he stood out in this snow to paint.