
by Claude Monet, 1869
Working in oil on canvas, Claude Monet painted this La Grenouillère in 1869 alongside his friend Pierre-Auguste Renoir. Both artists set up easels at a popular bathing spot on the Seine near Bougival, just a train ride from Paris. Emperor Napoleon III and Empress Eugénie had recently visited, giving the resort fashionable cachet.
The painting shows "Flowerpot Island," a small platform nicknamed "the Camembert," where bathers gathered between dips. Monet's rapid, broken brushstrokes capture sunlight dancing on water, an effect impossible to achieve with traditional techniques. In a letter to Bazille, he called these works "bad sketches" of a dream he hoped to realize properly. Art historians now see them as key steps toward Impressionism.
The canvas measures 74.6 by 99.7 centimeters and belongs to The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. It came through the H.O. Havemeyer Collection in 1929. A related version hangs at the National Gallery in London.

Ancient Greek (Unknown), -500
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Ancient Greek (Unknown), -390
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Diego Velázquez
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Ancient Egyptian (Unknown), -1070
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Other masterpieces from the Impressionism movement

Edgar Degas, 1867
Musée d'Orsay, Paris

Edgar Degas, 1890
Musée d'Orsay, Paris

Pierre-Auguste Renoir, 1881
Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago

Edgar Degas, 1878
Musée d'Orsay, Paris

James McNeill Whistler, 1871
Musée d'Orsay, Paris

Pierre-Auguste Renoir, 1881
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir, 1881
The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.

Édouard Manet, 1863
Musée d'Orsay, Paris
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