The Magpie: Monet's Winter Masterpiece of Coloured Snow

A Quiet Winter Scene

The Magpie is an oil painting by Claude Monet, made during the winter of 1868–1869 in the countryside near Étretat, on the coast of Normandy. It measures about 89 by 130 centimetres. The picture shows a field covered in fresh snow, a low fence woven from branches running across it, and a simple wooden gate. On top of the gate sits a single magpie, a small dark shape that is easy to miss at first. Behind the fence rise snow-laden trees and the roof of a farmhouse, all softened by pale winter light.

At first glance it looks like a calm, almost empty landscape. But the longer you look, the more you notice. The snow is not one flat white: it shifts between cream, yellow, pink, grey, lilac and blue. The fence casts long shadows across the ground, and those shadows are not grey or black but blue and violet. This careful study of colour in snow makes The Magpie one of the most admired winter landscapes in Western art. Today it hangs in the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, which acquired it in 1984.

A Happy Winter in Étretat

The late 1860s were difficult years for Monet. He had little money, his father disapproved of his relationship with Camille Doncieux, and the Salon jury often rejected his work. In August 1867 Camille gave birth to their son Jean.

Help came from Louis Joachim Gaudibert, a wealthy man from Le Havre who admired Monet's painting. Gaudibert bought works from him, commissioned a full-length portrait of his wife, now also in the Musée d'Orsay, and helped arrange a house in Étretat where Monet, Camille and baby Jean could live together during the winter. For once Monet could paint without worrying constantly about rent.

In a letter to his friend Frédéric Bazille written at this time, Monet described how content he was: he spent his days outdoors painting by the sea and in the snowy countryside, and his evenings at home by the fire with his little family. The Magpie carries some of that peaceful mood. It is one of the largest and most ambitious landscapes he painted that winter.

Étretat itself is a small seaside village famous for its tall white chalk cliffs and natural stone arches, such as the Porte d'Aval, and for a pointed rock standing in the sea called the Aiguille, or "Needle". Monet would return in the 1880s to paint dozens of views of these cliffs in every kind of weather. In the winter of 1868–1869, however, he also turned inland, to the quiet snowy fields and farms around the village, and found there a subject that was just as rich as the sea.

Why Snow Was a Challenge

Snow is one of the hardest subjects for a painter. Because it reflects almost all the light that falls on it, it changes colour with the sky, the time of day and the angle of the sun. A painter who simply uses white paint ends up with a flat, lifeless surface. Before the Impressionists, many artists painted snow in studio conditions and used grey or brown for its shadows.

Monet went outside and looked. He noticed that on a clear winter day the shadows on snow pick up the blue of the sky, while the sunlit areas glow with warm yellows and pinks. In The Magpie he painted exactly what he saw: the fence's shadows are blue-violet, the snow in direct sun is creamy and warm, and the snow in shade is cool. This idea of coloured shadows became one of the trademarks of Impressionism.

Monet was not the first to be attracted by winter scenes. The realist painter Gustave Courbet, whom Monet knew and admired, had painted several snowy landscapes in the 1860s. But Monet went further in making light and colour the true subject of the picture.

Painting in the Freezing Cold

Monet insisted on working en plein air, outdoors in front of his subject, even in winter. Stories from these years describe him standing in the snow for hours with his easel, wrapped in several coats and wearing gloves, with a heater for his feet. One local journalist recalled seeing him painting a snowy landscape in such bitter cold that the scene seemed hardly possible.

Working outdoors in winter had practical problems. Oil paint becomes stiff in the cold, fingers go numb, and the light changes quickly on short winter days. A painter has to work fast and decide quickly where each colour belongs. These conditions help explain the loose, confident brushwork in The Magpie, where the snow is built from many visible strokes laid side by side.

The Bird at the Centre

The magpie gives the painting its name, yet it is tiny compared with the whole canvas. Its role is mostly visual. It is the darkest spot in a painting made almost entirely of light tones, so the eye goes straight to it and then travels along the fence and across the snow. Without the bird, the composition would feel empty; with it, the scene comes alive and has a clear focal point.

The Eurasian magpie is a common bird across Europe and much of Asia. It belongs to the crow family, has striking black-and-white feathers with a blue-green shine and a long tail, and stays in the same area all winter instead of migrating, which is why Monet could find one in a snowy Normandy field. Magpies are also known for being very intelligent: in a 2008 study, they became the first non-mammals shown to recognise themselves in a mirror.

Rejected by the Salon

Monet submitted The Magpie to the Paris Salon of 1869, and the jury rejected it. For the official art world of the time, a large painting of an empty snowy field with a bird on a gate was not a serious subject, and its visible brushstrokes and bold blue shadows looked too unusual and unfinished.

The rejection was one of several that pushed Monet and his friends to look for other ways to show their work. A few years later, in 1874, they organised their own independent exhibition, where Monet showed Impression, Sunrise, the painting that gave the movement its name. Today the judgement of the 1869 jury looks very different: The Magpie is one of the most popular paintings in the Musée d'Orsay and often appears on posters, calendars and holiday cards.

Monet's Other Snow Paintings

Winter remained one of Monet's favourite subjects throughout his life. He painted more than a hundred snow scenes, including:

• The Cart, Snow-Covered Road at Honfleur, painted in the 1860s, an earlier attempt at a snowy road in Normandy, also in the Musée d'Orsay.
• Views of Argenteuil under snow from the mid-1870s, when he lived there with Camille and Jean, the same years in which he painted Woman with a Parasol.
• Scenes of ice breaking up on the Seine near Vétheuil after the extremely cold winter of 1879–1880.
• Winter landscapes painted in Norway in 1895, when he travelled there to visit his stepson.
• Several of the famous Haystacks of 1890–1891, showing the stacks covered with snow and frost.

Among all these works, The Magpie stands out as the moment when the young Monet first showed, on a large canvas, how much colour and life can be found in a winter field. It is a reminder that looking carefully, even at something as ordinary as snow, can reveal a whole world of colour.