Le Bateau-atelier

By 1876 Monet had been living at Argenteuil, a river town just downstream from Paris, for a few years, and he had solved a practical problem in a very Monet way. To paint the Seine from the middle of the Seine, he bought a small boat and built a plank cabin on it, just wide enough for an easel. He borrowed the idea from the older painter Daubigny, a friend who had his own floating studio. This canvas shows that boat, moored among the reeds, with the painter himself at work under its awning. It let him catch the water and the far bank from angles no one standing on shore could reach. The reflections here are painted from a deck that was rocking as he worked.