Many of the canvases executed by Monet during his three-month trip to Venice in 1908 are in prominent international museum collections, such as the Museum of Fine Arts Boston and the Fine Art Museums San Francisco, and the series of works is among the artist’s most sought after and acclaimed. Le Grand Canal is undoubtedly the finest of a discrete group of six canvases painted from the steps of the Palazzo Barbaro looking across and down the Grand Canal towards Santa Maria della Salute. Monet and his wife, Alice, traveled to Venice in the autumn of 1908 at the invitation of Mary Young Hunter, a wealthy American who had been introduced to the Monets by John Singer Sargent. Welcomed by a circle of affluent Americans in Venice, Monet spent his time in the Palazzo Barbaro and the Grand Hotel Britannia, both on the Grand Canal, capturing some of the most iconic images of his career. Monet’s depiction of the domes of Santa Maria della Salute on the Grand Canal, seen from the steps of the Palazzo Barbaro, marks a striking juxtaposition from the Old Masters’ detailed depictions of Venice and the even more lavish and picturesque 18th century vedute of the famed city. Monet’s series introduces a fresh approach that finely captures the ever-changing splendor of light upon the city’s ancient edifices and the water that surrounds them. Monet drew upon his artistic predecessors in Venice such as Turner and Whistler, as well as his personal achievements of his own London series of paintings. Unlike Monet’s usual methods of charting the changes of time and light as the course of the day would progress, in Venice, time was not to be one of the factors of variations for his motifs. It was what he called 'the envelope'—the surrounding atmospheric conditions, the famous Venetian haze—that became the principal factor of variation with these motifs. On 19th December 1908, a few days after Monet’s return to Paris, the influential Impressionist gallery Bernheim-Jeune acquired 28 of the 37 views of Venice, though Monet kept the pictures in his studio to add finishing touches. It was only in 1911 after the death of his wife that Monet finally agreed on a date for the exhibition Claude Monet Venise at Bernheim-Jeune, which opened on 28 May 1912 and was greeted with considerable critical acclaim.