"The village of Giverny rests against the hills on the east bank of the Seine at the confluence of the Epte river, about forty miles north-west of Paris. There the valley broadens, offering an extraordinary panorama. The plains of the Ajoux and the Essarts extend to the South towards the Seine, criss-crossed by ribbons of willows and poplars and by the capricious course of the Epte. On the other bank the wide arc of wooded hills - the slopes of Jeufosse, Port-Villez, and Grand Val - range from opposite Bennecourt in the southeast to Vernon in the northwest. The path of the sun follows the line of these hills so that in every season, whatever the time of day, the view from Giverny is lit from behind.

That orientation appealed to Claude Monet even before he came to Giverny...To paint what was reflected in the water, the movement of the leaves before the light, the mist veiling the sun, a sunset or sunrise, Monet had only to follow the natural slope of the land from his house to the fields and meadows laced by the water and trees. There the landscape, shimmering in the iridescent light, was constantly changing...It was Impressionism at its purest...Monet must have foreseen all this when he looked for a house in Normandy and found, at Giverny, the property with the flowering orchard on the road from Vernon to Gasny." (D. Wildenstein, "Monet's Giverny", in exh. cat. Monet's Years at Giverny: Beyond Impressionism, Metropolitan Musem of Art, 1978, pp. 15-16).

The soft foliage and flat, gentle contours of the countryside around Giverny gave rise to a group of subtle, airy compositions, of which Les Bords de l'Epte à Giverny is one. Daniel Wildenstein identifies the view depicted as on the main branch of the Epte, in the south-east of Giverny, with a view over the marshy plains to the mill of Cossy.