The Petite Creuse River

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 France beginning in early March 1889 after visiting the region for a few days with art critic Gustave Geffroy in February. Despite bouts of poor health and bad weather, he returned to Giverny having painted 24 canvases. These constituted the artist’s first planned and rigorously defined series of paintings.