Meadow with Poplars

Some 15 years before the haystacks and the poplars made him famous as a painter of series, Monet put both into one small canvas. The Museum of Fine Arts dates it to about 1875 and calls it an early appearance of the two subjects he would come back to in the 1890s. In these years, though, his concern lay elsewhere, in making air and depth out of colour alone, and the museum shows how he managed it here. In the foreground he picked out highlights in bright, thick paint, in contrasting pairs, red against green and purple against yellow, and they seem to bring the near meadow toward you. Further back the colours turn cool and the paint goes on more fluidly, and the land slips away into a hazy distance. Monet sold the picture in 1878. Durand-Ruel bought it in 1894, and in 1897 it went through a Boston gallery to a collector in the city. It came to the Museum of Fine Arts in 1923 with her husband's bequest.