The Ball-Shaped Tree, Argenteuil

Argenteuil had been fought over. Prussian troops occupied the town in the winter of 1870, the bridges over the Seine came down, and it came out of the war badly damaged. By 1876 it had been rebuilt as a weekend suburb, a short train ride from the Gare Saint-Lazare, with a promenade along the water, sailing races, and villas where Paris families spent the summer. Monet had been living there nearly five years. For this one he crossed to the far bank at Petit-Gennevilliers and looked back at the lower end of that promenade. He left out the bridge and the sailboats that fill his other Argenteuil pictures, and built it from the houses, the round tree and their reflections, laid in horizontal bands like the Japanese prints he collected. In January 1878 he left Argenteuil in debt and moved downriver to Vetheuil.