In the summer of 1878, Monet moved with his family to V¨¦theuil. His stay there of three-and-a-half years was a period in his life full of tragic adversity. Beginning with the birth of their second son, his wife's condition increasingly worsened, and until her death in September 1879, all their money went to doctors and medicines. Due to financial pressure, they shared a household with the family of Monet's friend and patron, Ernest Hosched¨¦. Overcoming a profound professional crisis and personal difficulty, the period spent in V¨¦theuil was ultimately a crucial period in Monet's artistic development its culmination was experimentation pursued that rendered perceptible atmospheric luminous phenomena, which he had commenced in Argenteuil. Prior to his arrival in V¨¦theuil, Monet had made a name for himself as a painter of modern life - and the urban everyday. Upon moving to the smalltown on the Seine, it was rather the peaceful rural landscape that interested him, and he focused on the subtle transitions of light and colour found in the landscape. He rendered numerous vistas of the immediate environs of his residence, the orchards surrounding the house and of the town from the riverbank. His Flowering Plum Trees, painted in the spring of 1879, was also made in the vicinity of the painter's house. Between the boughs of the fruit trees, a part of V¨¦theuil can be seen, as well as the hill of Ch?nay in the background. Monet devotes all his attention to the direct study of nature, reducing the presence of man to the minimum, while anecdotal details are completely absent. Nothing can be felt of his tribulations, the gaiety of his paintings from the period contradicting his hopeless family circumstances. Everything pulsates in the painting; every point comes to life. The picture is a masterful example of the optical blending of colours, the breaking down of natural colours to their elementary units. The eye perceives these separated units as the infinite subtle nuances of tone. The brushstrokes practically trace the undulations of the breeze between the trees, up to the softly inclining crest of the hill. The conscious activation of the viewer's gaze heightens the illusion of motion in the picture, and the sun-kissed landscape is permeated with vibrating vividness. Title Plum Trees in Blossom Creator Claude Monet Date Created 1879 Physical Dimensions 64.5 x 81 cm Type paintings Publisher Museum of Fine Arts Budapest Rights http //www.szepmuveszeti.hu/rights_and_reproductions Medium oil on canvas Inventory Number 266.B
