Улица Сен-Дени, украшенная флагами

On 30 June 1878 France held its first great national celebration since the Republic was founded eight years earlier, staged around the world's fair that had filled Paris all that summer. Flags went up along every street. Monet was living in the city, badly short of money, with a son a few months old, and by his own account he took his paintbox and went out into it.

He painted two streets that day. This is the rue Saint-Denis. The other one, the rue Montorgueil, is in the Orsay. Both are mostly flags, put down in quick strokes, with the street itself disappearing underneath them.

He showed this one at the Impressionist exhibition the following spring. François Depeaux, a coal merchant from Rouen, bought it at auction in 1896, and in 1909 he gave his Impressionists to the museum in Rouen, where it has been ever since.