Claude Monet - Springtime through the branches

Springtime through the Branches (Le printemps à travers les branches), 1878 - Claude Monet, oil on canvas. Claude Monet (Paris, 1840 - Giverny, 1926) was a French Impressionist painter. This spring landscape dates from the same period in which Monet was working along the Seine and on the Île de la Grande Jatte. Instead of opening the view directly, he places a network of foreground branches between the viewer and the brighter distance. The device breaks conventional depth into overlapping layers and turns fresh foliage into a screen of colour and light. Signed and dated 1878, the work shows Monet using an ordinary riverside motif to explore how vegetation filters vision and fragments the surrounding landscape.