Valley of the Creuse, Afternoon Sunlight 1889

Claude Monet made this painting of the Valley of the Creuse using oil paints, likely in the late 19th century. Monet, like other impressionist painters, embraced new materials enabled by industrial production, such as premixed paints in tubes. This allowed artists to venture out of the studio to paint ‘en plein air’, on location. The visible brushstrokes in the painting are as important as the scene itself, built up through a layering of short touches of pigment. It is through this application of material that Monet captured the textures, weight and forms of the valley, and specifically the sunlight. Monet’s focus on perception meant that the application of paint was also a performance of seeing. Ultimately, a painting like this prompts us to consider the materiality of the painted image, as a kind of craft in its own right.