Entrance to the Village of Vétheuil in Winter

Half of this picture is road. Monet chose a viewpoint that makes the way into Vétheuil spread across the whole lower part of the canvas, a wet country road edged with ragged grass and weeds, its snow already going soft. The village waits further back. Vétheuil lies a good deal further down the Seine than Argenteuil, where Monet had lived before, and the Museum of Fine Arts points out what that distance meant for his pictures. The suburban gardens and the sailing regattas are gone. This is a village still untouched by the modern suburb, seen in a thaw. The museum dates the canvas 1879. Monet sold it in February 1880 to a Paris collector, and ten years later it passed through a sale at the Hôtel Drouot to the dealers Boussod, Valadon and Company. In April 1891 they sold it to Williams and Everett, a Boston gallery, and that same year it went to James M. Prendergast. His sister Julia gave it to the Museum of Fine Arts in 1921, in his memory.