Late Impressionism
Claude Monet
The Four Trees
1891
Oil on canvas, 81.9 × 81.6 cm. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Four poplar trunks on the bank of the river Epte, cut off by the top edge and doubled in the water. The Met describes its flat, pattern-like design as strikingly abstract.
- Four trunks and a crossing band of foliage form a flat grid on a nearly square canvas. Here Impressionist close looking at nature edges toward abstraction.
- Fifteen of the poplars, this one included, were shown together at Durand-Ruel's Paris gallery in 1892.
- The village of Limetz planned to auction the trees, so Monet paid a timber dealer to delay the felling.
- He painted this view from a flat-bottomed boat with racks for several canvases.
- Bought by the Havemeyers in 1895, it came to the Met with their bequest in 1929.
Poplars grow fast and were planted in rows along French rivers, roads and field edges.
Themes
Image: Wikimedia Commons (CC0 file from The Met's Open Access release) · CC0