Frost

In the spring of 1880 Monet stayed out of his friends' group show and, in June, hung an exhibition of his own work instead, the first he ever had, in the Paris offices of La Vie moderne, an illustrated weekly run by the publisher Georges Charpentier. This canvas was in it, fresh from the bitter winter he had just spent at Vétheuil on the Seine. It shows the riverbank under hoarfrost, bushes and poplars furred white and pink in a low sun, with a small boat pulled up in the foreground, capped with rime. He signed and dated it 1880 in the lower corner. His friend the painter Gustave Caillebotte probably bought it at that show, kept it until his death in 1894 and left it to the state with the rest of his collection. In 1918 the national museums lent it out to the Ministry of Commerce in Paris.