À propos de l’œuvre
Les glaçons, par Claude Monet
Claude Monet · Frozen Seine · 1880 · W567
The W567 Ice Cubeshand painted reproduction
Large patches of ice drift on an arm of the Seine in front of a bank punctuated with poplars. The vertical trees dissolve in a pink and green mist, while the ice cubes in the foreground are surrounded by blue, gray and mauve. Painted and signed in 1880, this oil on canvas measuring 60.5 × 99.5 cm is kept in the Musée d'Orsay under the number RF 1965 10 and corresponds to Wildenstein 567.
Look at the work
The debacle transforms the surface of the river into a clear mosaic under an almost erased bank
The bank line remains high and very thin, which reserves most of the format for water. Poplars rise like irregular accents in the misty sky; in the foreground, the ice sheets overlap and open several oblique passages towards the center.
The palette seems limited, but no gray is neutral. The sky mixes sea green, pink and cream; the ice adds cold blue, purple and some dark lines which give the plates their thickness.
The river is no longer a continuous mirror: the broken ice fragments the reflections and forces Monet to construct depth through a succession of floating surfaces.
Composition, touch and light
What Monet builds behind the impression of snapshot
Three precise elements allow us to understand this composition and the essential difficulties of faithful reproduction.
A deliberately high horizon line
By reducing the bank and the sky, Monet brings the ice cubes closer to the viewer. Their repetition becomes the real subject, while the trees serve as a measure in the distance.
Plates rendered by their borders
Ice cubes are often barely lighter than water. It is their blue, green or purple contours and dark gaps that make them shaped and moved.
A colorful mist that unites the scene
Pink and green tones pass from the sky to the trees then to the surface of the river. This atmospheric continuity attenuates the harshness of the phenomenon without erasing the cold.
Reference image
Read this specific version
The unique collector's photograph of 3,636 × 2,146 px was reduced to 3,000 × 1,771 px and then encoded as a real WebP, without artificial enlargement.
Preserve the multitude of irregular shapes
The plates must neither become identical rollers nor merge into a white expanse; their sizes and orientations create movement.
Preserve very fine poplars
Their incomplete silhouettes emerge from the mist. Continuous black trunks would close the bank and harden the atmosphere.
Keep the roses and greens of the sky
These delicate colors differentiate W567 from other darker or bluer debacles painted by Monet at the same time.
Documented benchmarks
Three pieces of information specific to this work
The Musée d'Orsay documents Les Glaçons, also entitled Débâcle sur la Seine, oil on canvas from 1880, 60.5 × 99.5 cm, inventory RF 1965 10 and catalog Wildenstein 567.
The breaking of ice during the winter of 1879-1880
After the exceptional freezing of the Seine, Monet followed the thaw and painted a series of views where the plates drifted, collided and modified the reflections of the river.
Monet and Rodin at the Georges Petit gallery in 1889
The Orsay notice mentions the painting under number 50 of this exhibition; it is then in the collection of Charles Ephrussi.
Donation from Baroness Eva Gebhard-Gourgaud in 1965
First attributed to the Louvre then presented at the Jeu de Paume, the work joined the Musée d'Orsay in 1986.
Your reproduction
What the painter must preserve
Fidelity here depends on precise relationships between light, touch, depth and color temperature.
- The Wildenstein 567 version
- The poplar bank in the mist
- The large patches of ice in the foreground
- The Seine Pink, Green and Blue Accord
Work sheet
| Title | The W567 Ice Cubes |
|---|---|
| Artist | Claude Monet (1840 -1926) |
| Date | 1880 |
| Original technique | Oil on canvas |
| Dimensions | 60.5 × 99.5 cm |
| Orientation | Horizontal |
| Conservation | Musée d'Orsay, Paris, France |
| Inventory | RF 1965 10 · Wildenstein 567 |
| Your reproduction | Handmade oil painting on canvas |
Presentation in your interior
A palette designed with the room
This panoramic landscape is suitable for a living room, dining room or office. A gray green, pale blue or linen wall and a dark setting underline its cold and subtle atmosphere.
