Ice Floes by Monet in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, May 2011

Title: Ice Floes

Artist: Claude Monet (French, Paris 1840–1926 Giverny)

Date: 1893

Medium: Oil on canvas

Dimensions: 26 x 39 1/2 in. (66 x 100.3 cm)

Classification: Paintings

Credit Line: H. O. Havemeyer Collection, Bequest of Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, 1929

Object Number: 29.100.108

The prolonged freeze and heavy snowfalls in the winter of 1892–93 inspired Monet to capture their effects on the Seine in a series of paintings for which he chose a vantage point not far from his home in Giverny. The river had frozen in mid-January but began to thaw on the 23rd; the following day, in a letter to his dealer, Durand-Ruel, Monet lamented that "the thaw came too soon for me . . . the results—just four or five canvases and they are far from complete." By the end of February, however, he had finished more than a dozen paintings, including this view of the melting ice floes.

Text from: www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/437123