Floating Ice on the Seine

In December 1879 France went through one of the harshest cold spells on record, and the Seine froze solid at Vétheuil, the village downriver from Paris where Monet was then living. On the night of 4 to 5 January 1880 the thaw came. The ice broke up with a noise loud enough to wake the household, and for days afterwards the river carried great slabs of it past the banks. Monet painted about a dozen canvases of that breakup, working outdoors in the cold. Here the floes crowd the open water in front of the far bank, and he signed and dated the picture 1880 in the lower right corner. By 1889 it belonged to Charles Ephrussi, the Paris collector and critic, who lent it that year to the large joint exhibition of Monet and the sculptor Rodin at the Galerie Georges Petit.