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Lot Essay
From 1922-1926 Monet worked on a series of almost a dozen pictures depicting his house and rose garden at Giverny, five of which were painted in 1925. The first in the series from this year was later bequeathed to the Musée Marmattan in Paris by Monet's son Michel and the present painting has been listed by Daniel Wildenstein as the second in the series. Remarkable in its abstraction and vibrancy of color La maison dans les roses was painted during an intense period of artistic activity, just a year before Monet's death. In a letter dated 7 September 1925, Paul Valery wrote, "He is showing us his most recent canvases. Strange clumps of roses captured under a blue sky" (quoted in D. Wildenstein, op. cit., 1985, p. 312). As Monet wrote to Gustave Geffroy, "I am passing each hour working with an ardour and a brand-new joy ... I am doing well with a number of enterprising canvases" (letter dated 11 September 1925, ibid., p. 421, no. 2611).
In the present painting Monet's house is seen in the distance with its blue slate roof and its windows overgrown by Virginia creeper, all surrounded by irises and rose bushes. These late paintings drew criticism from his contemporaries, many of whom attributed the loosening of Monet's brushwork to the result of his aging eyesight. However, today, the present painting can be seen as confirmation of Monet's single-minded determinism and quintessentially modern vision. What Clement Greenberg wrote of the Water Lilies from this period is equally applicable to the present work, "The broad, daubed scribble in which the Water Lilies are executed says that the surface of a painting must breathe, but that its breath is to be made of the texture and body of canvas and paint ... that pigment is to be solicited from the surface, not just applied to it" (Monet: A Retrospective, exh. cat., 1995, New York, p. 381).
In the present painting Monet's house is seen in the distance with its blue slate roof and its windows overgrown by Virginia creeper, all surrounded by irises and rose bushes. These late paintings drew criticism from his contemporaries, many of whom attributed the loosening of Monet's brushwork to the result of his aging eyesight. However, today, the present painting can be seen as confirmation of Monet's single-minded determinism and quintessentially modern vision. What Clement Greenberg wrote of the Water Lilies from this period is equally applicable to the present work, "The broad, daubed scribble in which the Water Lilies are executed says that the surface of a painting must breathe, but that its breath is to be made of the texture and body of canvas and paint ... that pigment is to be solicited from the surface, not just applied to it" (Monet: A Retrospective, exh. cat., 1995, New York, p. 381).