Claude Monet

The boat basin at Argenteuil, with its long promenade and terraced café, was a popular site for watching sailing regattas on the Seine. Monet set up his easel on an island across the river, distinguishing optical effects and textures with strategically varied brushmarks. Using pigments direct from tubes and mixed on his palette, he evoked the bramble of grasses in the foreground with congested jabs of color. A dappled mosaic of horizontal dashes captures the movement of water and the reflections of broadly painted sailboats. Along the riverwalk, dark and light flicks of paint mark a procession of plane trees whose gray-green leaves and their purple shadows are rendered with a flattened touch.