In the Meadow

In April 1877 the Impressionists opened their third group show in a large rented apartment on the rue Le Peletier in Paris, and Monet sent in about 30 pictures. The ones people talked about were his new views inside the Gare Saint-Lazare, all steam and iron. This canvas hung in the same show. He had painted it the summer before at Argenteuil, the town on the Seine just north-west of Paris where he was living. The woman almost swallowed by the flowering grass is his wife, Camille, sitting with a book, and the meadow takes up nearly the whole picture. After 1877 the painting stayed in private collections in Europe. It was last shown in public at the Tate in London in 1957 and came up for auction for the first time in February 2009, when it sold at Christie's in London for about £11 million.