In the late 1860s, Monet started to extend the need to capture sensations and render "the effect" to all transitory, even fleeting states of nature. Taking Pissarro, Renoir and Sisley with him, Monet tackled the great challenge of a snow-covered landscape, which Courbet had grandly explored with great success not long before. Toning down Courbet's lyricism, Monet preferred a frail magpie perched on a gate, like a note on a staff of music, to the world of the forest and hunting. Sun and shade construct the painting and translate the impalpable part-solid part-liquid matter. The Impressionist landscape was born, five years before the first official exhibition when the movement was given its name.

　This painting of a place in the countryside near Etretat, executed on the spot, uses very unusual pale, luminous colours, a fact highlighted by the critic Felix Fénéon: "[The public] accustomed to the tarry sauces cooked up by the chefs of art schools and academies, was flabbergasted by this pale painting." The novelty and daring of Monet's approach, which was more about perception than description, explain the painting's rejection by the jury of the 1869 salon.

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　　画家所画《喜鹊》的具体地点并不被人所知。这是严冬的一天，骤雪初歇，但天气依然寒冷。于是，艺术家以对这个晴朗而寒冷的冬日和一场暴雪的描绘，表达了他此刻的心情。

　　画面显示天气阴暗，柔和的阳光照在厚厚的积雪上，画面横向里有一道几乎被积雪所掩埋的篱笆墙，围墙里有一座低矮的农舍坐落在杂木的掩映中…。大雪过后，似乎整个环境都安静下来了，没有一点声音，没有什么在运动，唯独在那个篱笆门上停落着一只喜鹊。如果你在想象中把那只喜鹊拿走，这个雪景的画面依然是十分美丽的，但是鸟儿给这幅画带来了生机、带来了运动：这喜鹊飞来了，落下了，摇看头，好像又要飞起来了。这只喜鹊是画面中唯一的生灵，也是我们关注的中心。莫奈自己把他所描绘的这只蹲在篱笆上的喜鹊叫做整个乐谱上的一个“孤独音符”，也就是“画龙点睛”的作用吧！

　　在描绘这幅冬日雪景时，艺术家巧妙、成功地处理了光线和阴影的变化，在白色的雪景中他大胆尝试着采用了红色、蓝色、紫色和黄色的色调。这时可见，农舍的温暖色调与屋顶的清冷及篱笆的深蓝色调形成了鲜明的对比。农舍树后的天空画得更明亮温暖些，大门右侧树木的颜色变淡…，他准确地记录了雪后篱笆墙投下的淡蓝阴影、雪地反光与阳光彼此辉映及明暗交接、错落有致的微妙及转瞬即逝的动感，美轮美奂、令人迷醉。所有这一切都是莫奈通过对大自然的悉心观察而一改过去印象派的画法而画就的，为印象派艺术家描绘雪景开辟了先河。

　　而令人无法理解的是，在1869年这位伟大艺术家的杰出画作《喜鹊》、这幅把冬季乡村雪景的美丽和轻盈描绘到了极致的绘画佳作，当时却不能被艺术评论者及观众所接受，并被绘画沙龙横加拒绝而排斥在画展之外。然而今天，莫奈的《喜鹊》则是巴黎奥赛博物馆的镇馆之宝，受到众多艺术家及观众的顶礼膜拜。