Regatta at Argenteuil - Claude Monet Business Card

Regatta at Argenteuil - Monet's boat-studio allowed him to add to the views of the Seine around Argenteuil, which were entirely executed en plein air. The painter described the studio quite simply as 'a barge with a cabin where I had just enough space to set up my easel'. He was thus able to paint this canvas which features in warm tones the small houses in front of the boat-builder's yard at Petit-Gennevilliers. This double image, of real life and its reflection, shows a regular, concise system of brushstrokes. The background motifs, the road bridge and the house with dormer window, are superficially sketched. Monet came closer than ever to the traditional marine format with this canvas and other views of the Seine at Argenteuil. Claude Monet (1840 – 1926) was a founder of French impressionist painting, and the most consistent and prolific practitioner of the movement's philosophy of expressing one's perceptions before nature, especially as applied to plein-air landscape painting. The term Impressionism is derived from the title of his painting Impression, Sunrise (Impression, soleil levant).