Ice Floes at Twilight

Sidney and Jenny Brown bought this canvas in 1910. He was an engineer and a director of Brown, Boveri, the electrical-machinery firm in Baden, and the couple were collecting Impressionist pictures while Impressionism still counted as contemporary art.

What they bought was a January on the Seine near Giverny. In early 1893 the ice broke up after a hard frost, the river rose, and drifting floes tore at the gardens along the banks. Monet painted twelve versions of the motif from much the same spot, and none of them shows the damage.

Here the river looks almost still, crowded with floes in pale yellow and violet under a pink evening sky. In the middle sits a small clump of bare trees, painted in fast, tangled strokes that only settle into trees from a few steps back. Monet signed and dated the canvas in the lower right corner.