O Serviço de Chá

Monet painted this quiet arrangement of a tea set on a tray in 1872, the same year he made the misty harbour view at Le Havre that, two years later, a critic would mock as a mere impression and hand the whole movement its name. He was living at Argenteuil outside Paris then, painting the river and gardens that built his reputation. A domestic still life like this sat a little apart from that. Such pictures were easier to sell than his landscapes in years when money ran short, and the porcelain and the polished tray let him do what he loved anyway, which was to follow how light slides across surfaces. The soft reflections are really the whole subject.