The Breaking up near Vétheuil

The winter of 1879 into 1880 was one of the coldest in memory around Paris. The Seine froze solid, and at the village of Vétheuil, where Monet was then living some 60 kilometres downriver, life more or less stopped. Then, in early January, a fast thaw broke the ice apart with a noise people compared to gunfire, and slabs of it went grinding down the current. Monet went out to paint it, again and again, about 20 canvases of the same drifting floes under changing light. This is one of them. He had reason to want to be outdoors and busy that winter. His wife, Camille, had died the previous September, at 32, and he was painting his way through it. The pale ice and flooded grey water are worked wet and quick, in the cold.