Poplars at Giverny, Sunrise

Claude Monet

Oil on canvas

Museum of Modern Art

Poplars at Giverny, Sunrise depicts tall poplar trees standing in single file along the marshland of the River Epte near Monet's home and studio in Giverny, bathed in the warm yellow-orange light of early morning. Executed in oil on canvas, the work exemplifies Monet's Impressionist commitment to capturing transient atmospheric effects through loose, expressive brushwork and a luminous, high-keyed palette. Monet had settled in Giverny in 1883 and the surrounding Norman landscape, particularly the poplar-lined banks of the Epte, became a sustained subject of his art through the late 1880s and into the 1890s. The painting anticipates his celebrated formal Poplars series of 1891, in which he systematically explored the same motif under varying light conditions and seasons, working at times from a specially outfitted floating studio on the river.