This work was bought by Dr. Hecht under the title, Effet de neige – Paysage a Giverny dated 1878. It was exhibited under the same title and date at Hotel Druot, Paris, in 1974. In Daniel Wildenstein's Claude Monet, Biographie et catalogue raisonne, 1979, however, this painting appears in a body of works executed in Giverny in 1886, under the title Le village de Giverny sous neige. According to Wildenstein, the houses below the hill ridge and meadow behind them represent Giverny's Quartier Pressoir, where Monet lived from 1883. The Musee Marmottan owns a drawing representing the same houses from the same point of view, entitled Houses in Giverny, 1886. The village of Giverny, typical of rural France, is situated at the foot of a hilly ridge overlooking water meadows within a mile of the river Seine. At the time of Monet, it consisted of two streets lined with low stone houses that were coated with faded pink or green stucco and topped with slate or thatched roofs. The narrow sides of the houses faced the hill, and the water meadows, where Monet would later paint his famous Haystacks series, were behind them. In 1878 Monet lived in Vetheuil, another village along the Seine near the hills, whose houses had a similar appearance to those in Giverny, but had their broad sides facing the hill. In the 1880s, Monet often represented the houses at the foot of the hills in Giverny and the water meadows behind them, punctuated with trees. The view in the Hecht painting suggests that Monet painted it by positioning himself on the slope of the hill above the houses.