Barcas rojas en Argenteuil

By the time Monet set up here in the mid-1870s, Argenteuil had become the weekend habit of Paris. The railway had cut the trip down the Seine to a few minutes, and clerks and shopkeepers came out on Sundays to sail the wide basin where the river slows. Monet had moved his family to the town in 1871 and painted its water again and again. In this one from 1875 the pleasure boats sit at anchor, their hulls a hard vermilion against the blue, the masts giving the picture its uprights. The quick broken strokes are Impressionism at full stretch, the paint laid down almost as fast as the light was changing. Look at the green skin on the water, weed and reflection caught in the same flick of the brush.