Seine at Rouen

Monet painted this stretch of the Seine at Rouen in 1872, soon after returning to France from wartime exile in London and settling downriver at Argenteuil. It is quick, sunlit work, sailing boats moored along the quays with their masts and reflections laid down in loose strokes. For most of the 20th century almost no one saw it. It had belonged to the German collector Otto Krebs, and in 1945 Soviet troops took his paintings as war booty. This one then sat in the secret storerooms of the Hermitage for nearly 50 years, unknown to scholars, until the museum finally revealed those hidden holdings in 1995.