散步

In the summer of 1864 Monet was 23 and short of money, his father having cut off most of his allowance. He had come to the Normandy coast with his friend Bazille and stayed on at Honfleur after Bazille went home, working alongside Boudin and the Dutchman Jongkind. The road here runs from Honfleur to Trouville, past the Saint-Siméon farm, a cheap inn where painters lodged and ate. The trees are black silhouettes, the browns and greens come out of Dutch landscape and the Barbizon painters he was still learning from, and the light on the road is a thick gleam worked into the paint. The canvas was bought in Paris for the shipping magnate Kojiro Matsukata, stayed in France, was seized there as enemy property after the war, and was handed back by the French government in 1959, part of the collection this Tokyo museum was built to house.