The Regatta at Argenteuil, ca. 1874

Several white-sailed boats drift across a river, their hulls catching light against a cluster of buildings and trees along the bank. The sky is overcast, rendered in soft blues and grays that blend with the muted earth tones of the shoreline, giving the whole scene a hushed, open-air stillness. This is Claude Monet's The Regatta at Argenteuil, painted around 1874 in oil, now held at the Musée d'Orsay. Monet, who lived from 1840 to 1926 and worked as a French painter, is associated with Impressionism and also created Impression, Sunrise. Worth noticing is how the sails and their reflections dissolve into loose strokes, so the water seems to shimmer and move even though the scene is calm, with the riverside structure anchoring the composition against the pale, clouded expanse above.