Lot Essay
Monet left Paris for the south of France on 14 January 1888, just over four years after beginning his first trip to the Riviera with Renoir in late December 1883. With Renoir, he had explored the Mediterranean coast around Monaco; he had then spent the first three months of 1884 on his own in the Italian seaside town of Bordighera and its immediate environs. Now, he headed for Antibes, a walled city on the Cte d'Azur midway between Nice and Cannes which he described as "a small fortified town, baked to a golden crust by the sun" (quoted in J. Pissarro, exh. cat., op. cit., Fort Worth, 1997, p. 42). At Maupassant's recommendation, Monet had arranged to stay at the Chteau de la Pinde, a small pension popular with artists; unfortunately, he was irritated by his fellow guests at the hotel, notably the well-known Salon landscape painter Henri Harpignies and a group of his students, whom Monet referred to as "idiots" in a letter to his wife Alice (quoted in ibid., p. 42). Monet spent his first few days at Antibes exploring the surrounding area, hiking more than fifteen miles from Monaco to Nice. By 19 January, he had located "five or six superb motifs," and wrote to Alice, "The weather is so admirable that it would be a crime not to set to work right away" (quoted in ibid., p. 42).
The Antibes landscape was a source of both inspiration and frustration for Monet. He was enthralled by the brilliant light of the Cte d'Azur. In letters to Alice, he described the southern sun as "resplendent and eternal" and wrote, "What I will bring back from here will be pure, gentle sweetness: some white, some pink, and some blue, and all this surrounded by the fairytale-like air" (quoted in ibid., pp. 42 and 44). The more beautiful the landscape appeared to Monet, however, the more difficulty he experienced in capturing it on canvas. In a letter to Auguste Rodin in early February, he likened the act of painting at Antibes to "wrestling" with the sun: "I'm working from morning to evening, brimming with energy... I'm fencing and wrestling with the sun. And what a sun it is. In order to paint here one would need gold and precious stones. It is quite remarkable" (quoted in R. Gordon and A. Forge, Monet, New York, 1983, p. 123). In a similar vein, he explained to Alice, "It is so bright, so pure with this pink and blue, that the slightest touch of paint that is not right looks like a stain of dirt;" and to the critic Gustave Geffroy he wrote, "I am digging and I am plagued by every devil. I am very worried about what I am doing. It is so beautiful here, so bright, so luminous. One swims in blue air, and it is frightening..." (quoted in J. Pissarro, op. cit., pp. 44 and 120).
The climatic extremes which Monet encountered at Antibes also proved vexing. The sun was so strong at certain times that the artist suffered from eyestrain and fatigue; gusting winds on other days forced him to chain his easel to the ground; and a ten-day period of rain in mid-February obliged him to halt work altogether. Moreover, the ever-changing weather and the passage of the season created a flux of scenery which complicated the process of landscape painting; as Monet lamented, "Everything grows, everything changes before your eyes" (quoted in ibid., p. 45). Despite the challenges which Antibes presented, however, the artist's sojourn there was extraordinarily fruitful. He worked relentlessly when the weather permitted, starting fourteen canvases before 1 February, an average of one per day during the first two weeks of his sojourn. By the time he left the Riviera for Giverny on 30 April, Monet had virtually completed thirty-nine pictures.
The present work is one of four closely related views of Antibes (figs. 1-4) which Monet executed from the Gardens of La Salis, a point south of the walled city just above the port of La Salis. Of these, only one besides ours remains in private hands; the other two are in prominent museum collections. To paint this series, Monet set up his easel close to the sea, in the area of the Gardens adjoining the Plateau de la Garoupe. The finished pictures depict Antibes against a hazy backdrop of Alps and sky, reflected in the glistening waters of the Mediterranean, framed in the foreground by a canopy of leafy trees. The tall edifice near the center of the townscape is the tower of the Grimaldi Castle; from this angle, the Grimaldi tower blocks the other key landmark of Antibes, the belltower of the cathedral. Monet painted one additional picture of Antibes from La Salis (Wildenstein, no. 1164; Private Collection), selecting a vantage point farther east and farther from the coastline than he did for the other four views. In this image, both the chteau and the cathedral are visible, and the foreground is entirely filled with exuberant foliage.
In the catalogue of the recent exhibition Monet and the Mediterranean, Joachim Pissarro notes that the pictures of Antibes which Monet made from La Salis can be clearly ordered by the progression of hours through the day. Three of the four pictures (figs. 1-3), including the present one, were painted in the morning, while the fourth (fig. 4) represents an afternoon effect. The earliest of the four is the picture in the Wohl Collection (fig. 1); here, the dawn light is still too low to illuminate the branches of the trees, which are rendered in deep, shadowy greens and blues. In the next version, the present example, flecks of gold and bright blue are introduced into the prevailing dark green to suggest that the light has just reached the tips of the foliage. The sun has risen fully in the Philadelphia painting (fig. 3) and bathes the entire panorama in brilliant noon light. Finally, in the Toledo painting (fig. 4), the light has softened to a rich afternoon glow and the foliage appears as a mosaic of gold, pink, green, yellow, and blue.
Representing the same motif at different times of the day, the pictures which Monet executed at Antibes mark one of his first systematic investigations of the serial method. Monet reportedly struggled with the problems inherent in this approach during his Antibes sojourn, writing to Alice, "I should guard against repeating myself" and "I feel that I am doing the same task over and over without progressing..." (quoted in J. House, op. cit., p. 133) However, this strategy appealed to the artist as a means of exploring a wide range of chromatic and plastic effects, and aided him in capturing the beauty of the Mediterranean scenery in its extraordinary flux. The Antibes pictures also paved the way for Monet's celebrated investigations of the serial method during the following decade, including the haystacks, the Charing Cross Bridge, and the Rouen Cathedral. As William Seitz has explained:
"...at Antibes, in one of the first systematically cyclical portrayals of light, [Monet's] almost pointillist touches have just this effect [of "diamonds and precious stones"], and the enduring tones of leaves, branches, and earth are wholly supplanted by the scintillating permeation of a Mediterranean morning, noon, and afternoon. With this group the series method is fully postulated." (W. Seitz, exh. cat., Claude Monet: Seasons and Moments ,exh. cat., New York, The Museum of Modern Art, 1960, pp. 19-23).
On 4 June, just over a month after his return from the Riviera, Monet sold ten of his Antibes canvases, including the present one, to Boussod, Valadon et cie, Theo van Gogh's Paris gallery. Van Gogh paid the artist 11,900 francs for the group, and agreed to share with him fifty percent of their retail mark-up. The pictures were hung immediately in two small, understated rooms at the gallery's 19 Boulevard Montmartre branch, and remained on view through July. Whereas Monet's Bordighera series had attracted little attention upon its initial exhibition, the Antibes pictures received an overwhelmingly positive response from critics, artists, and gallery-goers. As Berthe Morisot commented, "You have made quite a conquest of this supposedly recalcitrant public" (quoted in D. Wildenstein, Monet or the Triumph of Impressionism, Cologne, 1996, p. 243). Prominent among Monet's supporters was the critic Gustave Geffroy, who wrote in a review in La Justice of the Boussod, Valadon et cie exhibition that Monet's views of Antibes captured "all that was characteristic about the area and all the deliciousness of the season": the "strength of the vegetation," the "neat delineations of the mountains," the "static movement of the Mediterranean sea," the "beautiful and bright light," the "sweetness of the air" (quoted in J. House, op. cit., p. 133; J. Pissarro, op. cit., p. 63).
(fig. 1) Claude Monet, Antibes vue de la Salis, 1888
Collection Mr. and Mrs. Joseph S. Wohl
(fig. 2) The present lot
(fig. 3) Claude Monet, Antibes, le matin, 1888
Philadelphia Museum of Art
(fig. 4) Claude Monet, Antibes vue de la Salis, 1888
Toledo Museum of Art
(no fig. #) Postcard of Antibes, seen from the Gardens of La Salis, c. 1900
The Antibes landscape was a source of both inspiration and frustration for Monet. He was enthralled by the brilliant light of the Cte d'Azur. In letters to Alice, he described the southern sun as "resplendent and eternal" and wrote, "What I will bring back from here will be pure, gentle sweetness: some white, some pink, and some blue, and all this surrounded by the fairytale-like air" (quoted in ibid., pp. 42 and 44). The more beautiful the landscape appeared to Monet, however, the more difficulty he experienced in capturing it on canvas. In a letter to Auguste Rodin in early February, he likened the act of painting at Antibes to "wrestling" with the sun: "I'm working from morning to evening, brimming with energy... I'm fencing and wrestling with the sun. And what a sun it is. In order to paint here one would need gold and precious stones. It is quite remarkable" (quoted in R. Gordon and A. Forge, Monet, New York, 1983, p. 123). In a similar vein, he explained to Alice, "It is so bright, so pure with this pink and blue, that the slightest touch of paint that is not right looks like a stain of dirt;" and to the critic Gustave Geffroy he wrote, "I am digging and I am plagued by every devil. I am very worried about what I am doing. It is so beautiful here, so bright, so luminous. One swims in blue air, and it is frightening..." (quoted in J. Pissarro, op. cit., pp. 44 and 120).
The climatic extremes which Monet encountered at Antibes also proved vexing. The sun was so strong at certain times that the artist suffered from eyestrain and fatigue; gusting winds on other days forced him to chain his easel to the ground; and a ten-day period of rain in mid-February obliged him to halt work altogether. Moreover, the ever-changing weather and the passage of the season created a flux of scenery which complicated the process of landscape painting; as Monet lamented, "Everything grows, everything changes before your eyes" (quoted in ibid., p. 45). Despite the challenges which Antibes presented, however, the artist's sojourn there was extraordinarily fruitful. He worked relentlessly when the weather permitted, starting fourteen canvases before 1 February, an average of one per day during the first two weeks of his sojourn. By the time he left the Riviera for Giverny on 30 April, Monet had virtually completed thirty-nine pictures.
The present work is one of four closely related views of Antibes (figs. 1-4) which Monet executed from the Gardens of La Salis, a point south of the walled city just above the port of La Salis. Of these, only one besides ours remains in private hands; the other two are in prominent museum collections. To paint this series, Monet set up his easel close to the sea, in the area of the Gardens adjoining the Plateau de la Garoupe. The finished pictures depict Antibes against a hazy backdrop of Alps and sky, reflected in the glistening waters of the Mediterranean, framed in the foreground by a canopy of leafy trees. The tall edifice near the center of the townscape is the tower of the Grimaldi Castle; from this angle, the Grimaldi tower blocks the other key landmark of Antibes, the belltower of the cathedral. Monet painted one additional picture of Antibes from La Salis (Wildenstein, no. 1164; Private Collection), selecting a vantage point farther east and farther from the coastline than he did for the other four views. In this image, both the chteau and the cathedral are visible, and the foreground is entirely filled with exuberant foliage.
In the catalogue of the recent exhibition Monet and the Mediterranean, Joachim Pissarro notes that the pictures of Antibes which Monet made from La Salis can be clearly ordered by the progression of hours through the day. Three of the four pictures (figs. 1-3), including the present one, were painted in the morning, while the fourth (fig. 4) represents an afternoon effect. The earliest of the four is the picture in the Wohl Collection (fig. 1); here, the dawn light is still too low to illuminate the branches of the trees, which are rendered in deep, shadowy greens and blues. In the next version, the present example, flecks of gold and bright blue are introduced into the prevailing dark green to suggest that the light has just reached the tips of the foliage. The sun has risen fully in the Philadelphia painting (fig. 3) and bathes the entire panorama in brilliant noon light. Finally, in the Toledo painting (fig. 4), the light has softened to a rich afternoon glow and the foliage appears as a mosaic of gold, pink, green, yellow, and blue.
Representing the same motif at different times of the day, the pictures which Monet executed at Antibes mark one of his first systematic investigations of the serial method. Monet reportedly struggled with the problems inherent in this approach during his Antibes sojourn, writing to Alice, "I should guard against repeating myself" and "I feel that I am doing the same task over and over without progressing..." (quoted in J. House, op. cit., p. 133) However, this strategy appealed to the artist as a means of exploring a wide range of chromatic and plastic effects, and aided him in capturing the beauty of the Mediterranean scenery in its extraordinary flux. The Antibes pictures also paved the way for Monet's celebrated investigations of the serial method during the following decade, including the haystacks, the Charing Cross Bridge, and the Rouen Cathedral. As William Seitz has explained:
"...at Antibes, in one of the first systematically cyclical portrayals of light, [Monet's] almost pointillist touches have just this effect [of "diamonds and precious stones"], and the enduring tones of leaves, branches, and earth are wholly supplanted by the scintillating permeation of a Mediterranean morning, noon, and afternoon. With this group the series method is fully postulated." (W. Seitz, exh. cat., Claude Monet: Seasons and Moments ,exh. cat., New York, The Museum of Modern Art, 1960, pp. 19-23).
On 4 June, just over a month after his return from the Riviera, Monet sold ten of his Antibes canvases, including the present one, to Boussod, Valadon et cie, Theo van Gogh's Paris gallery. Van Gogh paid the artist 11,900 francs for the group, and agreed to share with him fifty percent of their retail mark-up. The pictures were hung immediately in two small, understated rooms at the gallery's 19 Boulevard Montmartre branch, and remained on view through July. Whereas Monet's Bordighera series had attracted little attention upon its initial exhibition, the Antibes pictures received an overwhelmingly positive response from critics, artists, and gallery-goers. As Berthe Morisot commented, "You have made quite a conquest of this supposedly recalcitrant public" (quoted in D. Wildenstein, Monet or the Triumph of Impressionism, Cologne, 1996, p. 243). Prominent among Monet's supporters was the critic Gustave Geffroy, who wrote in a review in La Justice of the Boussod, Valadon et cie exhibition that Monet's views of Antibes captured "all that was characteristic about the area and all the deliciousness of the season": the "strength of the vegetation," the "neat delineations of the mountains," the "static movement of the Mediterranean sea," the "beautiful and bright light," the "sweetness of the air" (quoted in J. House, op. cit., p. 133; J. Pissarro, op. cit., p. 63).
(fig. 1) Claude Monet, Antibes vue de la Salis, 1888
Collection Mr. and Mrs. Joseph S. Wohl
(fig. 2) The present lot
(fig. 3) Claude Monet, Antibes, le matin, 1888
Philadelphia Museum of Art
(fig. 4) Claude Monet, Antibes vue de la Salis, 1888
Toledo Museum of Art
(no fig. #) Postcard of Antibes, seen from the Gardens of La Salis, c. 1900