Between 1867 and 1893, Monet and fellow Impressionists Alfred Sisley and Camille Pissarro painted hundreds of landscapes illustrating the natural effect of snow (effet de neige).

This subjective theory of color perception was introduced to the art world through the works of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Michel Eugène Chevreul earlier in the century.

In the late 1850s, French landscape painter Eugène Boudin (1824–1898) introduced Monet (1840–1926) to the art of painting en plein air—"in the open air", using natural light.

"[4] The landscape paintings of Dutch painter Johan Barthold Jongkind (1819–1891) influenced both Boudin and Monet and contributed to the development of early Impressionism.

Gustave Courbet (1819–1877) had been painting effets de neige, "snow effects", from as early as 1856,[9] in a landscape style preferred by Japanese, Dutch, and Flemish artists.

Monet chose an earth tone color scheme and increased the number of shades of blue to highlight reflections on the snow.

Lacking money, Monet returned to his father's house in Sainte-Adresse and lived with his aunt, leaving Doncieux and their child in Paris.

[25] Monet's experimental use of color and radical departure from the descriptive, academic style surprised the public and probably contributed to its dismissal by the jury.

[26] Monet told French novelist Arsène Houssaye (1815–1896), "This rejection has taken the bread from my mouth, and in spite of my low prices, collectors and dealers turn their backs on me.

[29] In the painting, a black magpie is perched on a gate in a wattle fence as sunlight falls on fresh white snow, creating shadows.

[30] Michael Howard of Manchester Metropolitan University called the painting "an extraordinary evocation of the snow-bound chill of a late winter's afternoon.

In such paintings as The Magpie, one of Monet's early masterpieces, form dissolves under the combination of a greatly restricted color range, aerial perspective, and broken brushwork.

Wonderfully abstract passages of flat color, such as the strong violet shades along the fence, are divorced from the spatial realities of the objects portrayed.

Goethe raised questions about subjective and objective color theory and perception, but his intuitive, non-mathematical approach was criticized as unscientific, and his attack on Newton was dismissed as a polemic.

Thirty years later, French chemist Michel Eugène Chevreul (1786–1889) expanded on Goethe's theory with The Principles of Harmony and Contrast of Colors (1839).

[38] Georges Seurat (1859–1891) came to prominence in 1886 with his technique of chromatic division, a style influenced by the color scheme theories of Chevreul and American physicist Ogden Rood (1831–1902).

Monet told his friend, French statesman Georges Clemenceau (1841–1929), that he spent the time "focusing on her temples and automatically analyzing the succession of appropriately graded colors which death was imposing on her motionless face.

[43] In honor of the 150th anniversary of Monet's birth, the Principality of Monaco issued a stamp of The Magpie in 1990, designed by French engraver Pierre Albuisson.

[44] French design studio Les 84 created a 3D version of The Magpie for the 2010–2011 Monet exhibition at the Galeries nationales du Grand Palais.