In the summers of 1896 and 1897 Monet set up his easel at three-thirty each morning in a boat moored just off the riverbank near his house at Giverny. There he sat and painted the series of twenty-one canvases to which this one belongs. Grisaille effects of morning mist, trees half-visible in the dawn light, and glimmering reflections on the water make this series arguably the most subtle he ever painted.