The Petite Creuse River
1889
Medium
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
65.9 × 93.1 cm (25 15/16 × 36 5/8 in.); Framed: 83.2 × 109.9 × 7.3 cm (32 3/4 × 43 1/4 × 2 7/8 in.)
Classification
painting
Department
Painting and Sculpture of Europe
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
81546
Rights
Public Domain
About this artwork
Claude Monet began this canvas—one of three of the Petite Creuse—in April 1889 but only returned to it later that spring, by which time the landscape had changed considerably. The oak tree, for example, was sprouting leaves, obscuring the view he had already established. Rather than rework or restart the canvas to depict the current season, Monet hired workers to defoliate the tree so that he could re-create its earlier appearance. Monet spent three months in the remote Creuse valley in central...
About the Artist
Claude Monet · 1840–1926
Claude Monet, born Oscar-Claude Monet on November 14, 1840, in Paris and raised in Le Havre, Normandy, began his artistic journey as a successful teenage caricaturist. His formal training started at the Le Havre secondary school of the arts in 1851, where he received his first drawing lessons from Jacques-François Ochard. Around 1858, he met Eugène Boudin, who became his pivotal mentor, introducin...