In December of 1874 the snow finally began to fall in Argenteuil. This was not the small event of a few soft flakes that disappeared into the muddy cart tracks of the rapidly industrializing town situated a short distance from Paris, where Monet had first settled in 1871. “Finally the snow is here, real snow, that we haven’t seen for many years,” wrote the “Chronique de sept jours” columnist in Le Presse Illustré on 19 December 1874. “I know very well,” he continued, “that people will write to me from Jura, Puy-de-Dôme, from the Haute-Loire, the Creuze, the Corrèze, from Cantal, Dauphiné, and the Pyrenees: ‘What? For several years you haven’t seen snow?’ My God, yes, it is true…. It is very much that of Father Winter, crystalline and immaculate snow, one thousand times whiter than white ermine and the tie of a perfect notary…. This snow is as beautiful, as pure, as that in the Alps” (reproduced in Exh. Cat., Washington, D.C. The Phillips Collection; The Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco and The Brooklyn Museum of Art, Impressionists in Winter, 1998-99, p. 224). It was this snow that surrounded Monet’s doorstep, just a short distance from the busy train station in Argenteuil. It was this snow that inspired “some of the most beautiful paintings that Monet produced during all his years at Argenteuil” (Paul Hayes Tucker, Monet at Argenteuil, New Haven and London, 1982, p. 48). Effets d’hiver à Argenteuil is one of these rare canvases from the winter of 1874-75 in which Monet fully immersed himself in the light, temperature and effects of the whitened winter landscape.

The subject of winter landscapes had fascinated Monet early in his career, and his first explorations of this theme can be found in his depictions of Honfleur in 1865 and 1867. In 1868, Léon Billot gave an account of Monet painting out-of-doors in the snow, a vivid proof of the artist's dedication to capturing the effects of light on the frozen landscape: “It was during winter, after several snowy days, when communications had almost been interrupted. The desire to see the countryside beneath its white shroud had led us across the fields. It was cold enough to split rocks. We glimpsed a little heater, then an easel, then a gentleman swathed in three overcoats, with gloved hands, his face half-frozen. It was M. Monet studying an aspect of the snow” (L. Billot, “Exposition des Beaux-Arts,” Journal du Havre, 9 October 1868).

Monet would continue to depict snow scenes in his work off and on until about 1900 (see above timeline), but those that he completed in the mid-1870s are considered among his most technically sophisticated. Writing about Monet's snow scenes, Eliza E. Rathbone observed: "The Impressionists, and above all Monet, determined to record the complete spectrum: deep snow in brilliant sunshine, creating the bluest of blue shadows; snow under a low, gray winter sky that shrouds nature in a single tonality; landscapes so deep in snow that all details are obscured, evoking a silent world; even snow melting along a country road at sunset; or, perhaps most striking, a sky filled with snow falling. Of all the Impressionists, Monet painted the largest number of snowscapes and the greatest variety of site, time of day, quality of light, and quality of snow itself. He was not only interested in a relatively traditional conception of a snowy landscape, but he found beauty in unexpected phenomena of winter. He brought to his snowscapes his desire to experiment both with new technique and with formal invention" (Eliza E. Rathbone, “Monet, Japonisme, and Effets de Neige” in Exh. Cat., Washington, D.C. The Phillips Collection; The Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco and The Brooklyn Museum of Art, Impressionists in Winter, 1998-99, p. 25).

Other artists from the Impressionist movement also took up their brushes to capture the atmosphere of the snowy landscape (see fig. 1). “Monet, Renoir, Pissarro, Sisley, Caillebotte, Gauguin, and others focused on the very particular character of the air, light, and the appearance of color in landscapes that were blanketed with white. Their snowscapes represent the first sustained interest in the subject since that of the seventeen-century Dutch landscape painters. With a few notable exceptions, however, most of these earlier paintings are not about the defining characteristics of the snowscape but rather about a wide range of human activities in the context of a landscape covered with snow. The Impressionists, on the other hand, were drawn to the subject beaucase of its unique visual characteristics. The subtleties of light and color offered an opportunity to work within a range of often muted color that brings to mind Whistler’s ‘symphonies’ in particular colors or combinations of color [see fig. 2]. The Impressionists concentrated not on ideas about the thing but the thing itself…” (Charles S. Moffett, “Effet de Neige: ‘Claude Monet and a few others…,’ Exh. Cat., Washington, D.C., The Phillips Collection; The Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco and The Brooklyn Museum of Art, Impressionists in Winter, 1998-99, pp. 15-16). This distinction—that the Impressionists sought to capture the snowscape itself and not the activities of humans within the landscape—applies not only to the Dutch painters but also to early depictions of snowfall found in even earlier medieval works of art (see figs. 3 and 4).

The human figures in Effets d’hiver à Argenteuil are almost incidental to the scene, as much a part of the fabric of it as the large blocks of stone covered in snow that dot the open foreground, presumably denoting that Monet was facing the yard of a stonemason looking towards the center of Argenteuil, with the church steeple in the distance. The surface of the present work is masterfully painted. Using short brush strokes so revolutionary to the Impressionist movement, Monet employs a rich and nuanced palette to capture the winter scene. “Of course, in almost any effet de neige painting,” wrote Charles Moffett, “there is considerably less to distract the eye than in an ordinary landscape with its plethora of colors and shapes. The painters tend to focus on subtleties that would otherwise be lost in myriad details, anecdotal content, and complex combinations of strong color” (ibid., p. 17). Subtle the palette and scene may be, but this appearance belies the complexity of compositional development and varied palette that Monet uses to achieve his desired effect.

Another growing inspiration for Monet in the 1870s was that of Japanese Woodblock prints (see fig. 4). We know from contemporary sources that by the late 1870s Monet himself had a large and impressive collection of these scenes, which would remain with him until his death, filling the walls of his home in Giverny, hung two and three deep at times. Eliza Rathbone has asserted that Monet “brought to his snowscapes his desire to experiment both with new technique and with formal invention. Only in the realm of nineteenth-century Japanese prints could Monet find a variety of compositional approaches to snowscapes an apt poetic interpretation of the subject that could be continually relevant and inspiring to his own” (ibid., p. 25).

Effets d’hiver à Argenteuil was acquired in January of 1875 by the wealthy industrialist Henri Rouart, a close friend of Degas and patron of the Impressionist group (see fig. 5). It was thanks to his financial support that several of the Impressionist exhibitions were funded; one of his sons, Ernest, became a painter in his own right, marrying the daughter of Berthe Morisot and Èugene Manet. Upon Henri’s death in 1912, Ernest and his other siblings decided to sell Henri’s collection, including the present work, at auction. This canvas, painted after the large snowfall of December 1874, had been with Rouart since nearly the moment of its creation. Today it comes to auction for the first time in over thirty years.