Claude Monet (1840-1926)
Regatta at Argenteuil

Claude Monet
Regatta at Argenteuil
1872 Canvas, oil paint 48x75cm
Paris, Musée d'Orsay

Painting size: Approximately original size
Work code: MonReg

Boats became popular around 1830 in the Ile-de-France area, a region centered on the outskirts of Paris.
Racing boats began to compete in Argenteuil from 1850 as the Seine expanded.
Being connected to Paris by rail, Argenteuil attracted more and more rowers, and on Sundays many people gathered near the river to watch the races.

Claude Monet lived in Argenteuil from December 1871 to mid-1878, and during that time he painted 170 works here on the banks of the Seine.
Monet painted this landscape two years before Impressionism was officially recognized as an art movement.

The invention of tubed paints in the mid-19th century allowed painters to leave their studios and sketch outside, so it is assumed that this Regatta at Argenteuil was also painted in natural light. .
Interested in the way landscapes reflected on the rippling surface of water, Monet tried to capture how the movement of air and water changed the light.

This method of depicting the reflection of light on a swaying water surface became an element of Monet's work after this work, and was also used as a central feature in Impression, Sunrise.

The Regatta of Argenteuil was acquired by Gustave Caillebotte in 1876 and bequeathed to the state in 1894. It is said that in the early 1870s, not only Monet but also Manet, Renoir, Sisley, and Caillebotte were working together in Argenteuil.
The Argenteuil period was an important era in the history of Impressionism, and this work can be said to be its representative work.