Claude Monet, 'Poplars on the Epte', 1891

We are looking up into the green-grey canopies of a line of poplar trees. These carve a sweeping S-bend across a bright blue summer sky before disappearing into the horizon. The tall, spindly trunks form a grid across the picture. It feels as much a painting about the pattern created by the trees as a depiction of the poplars themselves.

Monet found the trees along the left bank of a series of bends on the River Epte, a tributary of the Seine, near his house in Giverny. To maximise the effect of the pattern, he settled on a low viewpoint. He set up his easel in a rowing boat moored in the middle of the river. You can see the watery reflections in the foreground.

Just as it depicts a series of trees, the picture is also part of a series. This was one of Monet’s first experiments in painting multiple versions of the same subject. The works were created during the spring, summer and autumn of 1891, when he was finishing another series, the famous haystacks paintings. The haystacks were depicted at different times of the year. With the poplars, Monet wanted to capture the effects of the light in different weather and at different times of the day. He worked on a number of canvases at once, swapping from one to the other as the light changed. Eventually, he had so many underway that he had to borrow a bigger boat from his friend, the artist Gustave Caillebotte. This had special slots to hold the canvases so that they could be managed more easily.

Monet’s project was nearly thwarted, however. In June 1890, when he was in the middle of making the paintings, the trees were put up for sale so that they could be felled for timber. Fortunately, the artist managed to strike a deal with a local merchant. He made a contribution to the purchase price on condition that he was given time to finish the pictures before the poplars were cut down.

There are about 20 paintings in the series. The majority depict a similar view to this one. Monet continued to work on them in his studio during the winter, before choosing 15 to exhibit at his dealer’s gallery in Paris in February 1892, to great critical acclaim. This painting, which was number 14 in the exhibition, was not as extensively reworked as the others. Perhaps he felt it was the most spontaneously successful. According to his step-daughter, Blanche Hoschedé-Monet, this picture was his favourite. It hung in his studio for several years until he finally agreed to sell it to a Russian collector. This may be when Monet inscribed the date – 1890 – on the painting. He seems to have been misremembering. Like the other poplar paintings, it was almost certainly made in 1891.