About this work
The eye enters this painting not through a horizon or a distant vista, but through water — shimmering, colour-saturated, filling nearly the entire canvas. A blue and rose coloration suffuses the scene, contrasting with freshness of green and vermilion to create a rich, dreamlike figural image. At the centre, two young women sit quietly in a flat-bottomed boat: Suzanne and Blanche, daughters of Mrs Hoschedé, dressed in white gowns whose colour seems to absorb and reflect the river itself. The boat is not presented whole — it is sliced by the picture's edge, pulling the composition off-balance in the most deliberate way. This bold slicing of the boat in half signals Monet's deep engagement with the art of photography and Japanese ukiyo-e prints. The figures are neither posed portraits nor dissolving silhouettes; the artist presents them as individuals with the fullness of a living entity.
Painted in 1887 in oil on canvas, *In the Boat* is one of the most highly finished works from a series Monet titled *Boating*.
Between 1887 and 1890, Monet concerned himself with portraying scenes from the River Epte, which skirted his property at Giverny — and it was the Hoschedé sisters who posed throughout this series, their mother Alice eventually becoming Monet's second wife.
In 1887–88 he painted at least six large canvases depicting Alice's daughters boating, returning to a subject he had explored earlier at Argenteuil, though the Giverny paintings are quite different, both stylistically and in structure.
The composition's oblique angle and intense colour reveal the influence of Japanese woodcuts — prints Monet admired deeply and collected in considerable number. The painting now resides in the permanent collection of the National Museum of Western Art in Tokyo.
On a wall, this painting demands stillness. Its near-square format and top-down perspective enclose the viewer in the same dreamy suspension as the two figures on the water — time feels paused rather than passing. It suits rooms that favour contemplation over spectacle: a reading corner with natural light, a bedroom where the palette's cool blues and faded roses ease the eye. The viewer it speaks to is someone who finds depth in quietness — who understands that Monet's radical act here wasn't a storm-lit cliff or a cathedral façade, but two women drifting on a summer afternoon, rendered in colour so precise it feels almost improvised.
