Claude Monet 1897. Claude Monet painted the 18 works in his Mornings on the Seine series from a flat-bottomed boat anchored to the riverbank where the Epte River flows into the Seine. There, as the light changed from dawn to day, he worked on one canvas after another. To keep them in order, he numbered them, placed them in grooves built into the boat, and had the gardener whom he enlisted as his assistant hand them to him.