A federal appeals court judge said Friday that a reference to Claude Monet in an opinion earlier this week had been widely misconstrued as a take-down of the esteemed French painter’s work.

The comments, from Judge Barrington D. Parker Jr. of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, addressed a brief passage in the court’s ruling from Thursday, which upheld a $6.75 million judgment in favor of graffiti artists whose work at Long Island City’s 5Pointz complex had been whitewashed amid a dispute with a real estate developer.