Poppies, the walk, a painting by Claude Monet

When he created this painting, Claude Monet, then 33 years old, was not yet living in Giverny. He resided in Argenteuil, a town in the former Seine-et-Oise department, northwest of Paris. The area was barely urbanized and the town had a rural, bucolic character, picturesque enough to draw Parisian painters in search of settings and subjects.

This canvas, also known simply as Poppies, or Poppies, the walk, caused a stir when it was shown at the first Impressionist exhibition, which opened on April 15, 1874, and closed on May 15, 1874.

The painting was bought by Paul Durand-Ruel, an art dealer, and then passed from hand to hand. The painter Ernest Duez owned it for a time before selling it to the collector Jean-Baptiste Faure. It later entered the collection of Étienne Moreau-Nélaton, who donated it to the State in 1906. After a brief stay in the paintings department of the Louvre, it joined the collections of the Musée d'Orsay.

This oil on canvas is modest in size: about 20 inches high by 26 inches wide (50 by 65 cm).

As its name suggests, the painting shows a vast field sown mostly with poppies, especially dense on the left, along the slope of a small dyke. In the foreground, set toward the right, an elegant woman with a parasol and a straw hat is accompanied by a child. The woman is most likely Camille Doncieux, Monet's first wife, and the child may be their son Jean, who was six in 1873. In the middle ground, on the left, another woman appears, also with a child. The background shows a row of trees and a comfortable two-story house with three windows on the upper floor.

The two pairs of figures structure the painting along a diagonal. The left side is dominated by the red of the poppies, while the blue-green meadow occupies the right.

The sky is filled with white clouds, cumulus that often mark the end of a shower and the return of fair weather. Poppies, the walk, was surely painted on a fine day in spring or early summer.
You can admire Poppies at Argenteuil at the Musée d'Orsay in Paris.

• Artist: Claude Monet, aged 33 at the time.
• Painted in 1873 at Argenteuil, northwest of Paris.
• Dimensions: about 20 inches high by 26 inches wide (50 by 65 cm).
• Where to see it: Musée d'Orsay, Paris.

If you love Monet's work, you will also enjoy our analyses of paintings such as Impression, Sunrise and Woman in a Green Dress.