Pre-eminent artist of French impressionism, Claude Monet was above all a landscape painter who painted effects of light with unparalleled skill. Born in Paris, he grew up in Normandy and learned about painting out of doors with Eugène Boudin and Johan Barthold Jongkind. While he spent most of the 1870s living in Argenteuil just west of Paris near the River Seine, in 1878 he moved further west to Vétheuil, where he would live for just over three years. This was a time of economic hardship for Monet when he and his wife Camille and their young son set up household with the Hochedé family. The house they shared was on the main road to Vétheuil that Monet included in this painting.