Claude Monet: "Poppy Fields at Argenteuil" poster (kraft paper) 47x36cm

"Les Coquelicots à Argenteuil" (Poppy Fields at Argenteuil) is one of the most famous works by Claude Monet. He painted it in 1873 in Argenteuil, a rural valley near Paris, where he lived for several years. The group of people in the foreground is most likely Monet's son Jean, who must have been about 6 years old at the time, and his wife Camille. The house in the middle of the background could represent Monet's own house. A line of flight seems to connect his wife and child to the building in the background, which is hidden in the middle of a row of trees marking the horizon.
The immediate eye-catching feature of the picture are the numerous poppies in the left half of the foreground, which crowd towards the viewer and almost seem to grow beyond the frame. An abundance of scarlet dots is set into a delicately transparent meadow, the blossoms, which stretch up a gentle hill, seem to float in the grass.
Only the upper bodies of Camille and Jean, placed as delicate silhouettes at the edge of the abundance of flowers, are visible. The little boy sinks between the tall grasses, his face not visible. On his head he is wearing a straw hat with a red ribbon wrapped around it, in his arm he is carrying a bouquet of freshly picked poppies.
Camille is carrying a blue-grey parasol, which hangs a little carelessly over her shoulder. Her hat, which is pulled deep into her face, hovers as a bright spot over the meadow, marking the dividing line between the poppy field and the meadow. In contrast to the fragrant, red spotted area, grasses and stalks in the foreground are drawn with fine strokes.
In the left background of the picture, on the crest of the poppy-scented hill, a second group of people can be seen, again mother and child, whose silhouette corresponds with Camille and Jean. It looks as if they are following them; a narrow darkly spotted line seems to suggest fresh walking tracks in grass and poppy seeds. We can assume that the walkers from the house first strolled along the trees on the hillside and only then chose the path through the middle of grass and poppy seeds.
The valley flows towards the background and is bordered by a group of trees that form a dark green dividing line to the hinterland and almost hide the house in the middle. With one exception, all these trees are of about the same height. The only significantly higher tree lies in a line that could be drawn through the middle of the poppy field and structures the picture in several ways. It rises into the soft and blue shining sky where clouds are dragging. From there, the gaze wanders to the upper group of people, gets caught in the red spotted poppy, sticks to Jean and Camille and gets caught in the red covered house in the background, which forms the vanishing point.