Spring Flowers
Claude Monet (French, 1840–1926)
1864
- Medium
- oil on canvas
- Classification
- Painting
- Dimensions
- Framed: 144.5 x 117.2 x 12.1 cm (56 7/8 x 46 1/8 x 4 3/4 in.); Unframed: 116.8 x 90.5 cm (46 x 35 5/8 in.)
- Culture
- France, 19th century
- Museum
- Cleveland Museum of Art, Modern European Painting and Sculpture
- Credit line
- Gift of the Hanna Fund
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Little Ones profiles and older: it shows gentle subjects for the very young. How works are placed
View at the Cleveland Museum of Art
About this work
This early work reveals Claude Monet's fascination with capturing the transitory effects that became the primary focus of his later innovations. Painted with almost scientific accuracy, this still life has a freshness and immediacy derived partly from its composition. Isolated against a dark background, the fully mature peonies, potted hydrangeas, and basketed lilacs spill downward and outward from the geraniums at the rear. At the same time, Monet's energetic brushwork conveys the sparkling play of light on leaves and petals.
