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Lot Essay
Sold with a photo-certificate from the Wildenstein Institute dated Paris, le 5 juillet 2000.
Port-Villez lies on the left bank of the Seine, around a mile from Giverny to where Monet moved permanently in 1883. However, the present work indicates that Monet visited the area before his move to Giverny, which is certainly plausible as Vétheuil, where he had spent much of the previous five years, is only a few miles up-river from Port-Villez. In the present work Monet has taken a position on the same bank as Port-Villez looking northward, down-river, with the flood plain of Limetz visible on the far bank. Monet was to paint at Port-Villez on a number of occasions over subsequent years, even choosing it as a site for a series of paintings in the 1890s.
There exists a picture of the same view executed by Pierre-Auguste Renoir entitled Chalands sur la Seine and housed today in the Musée d'Orsay (fig. 1). So similar are the pictures in terms of subject - the procession of chalands, or barges, seems only fractionally further advanced in the Monet - and blustery weather conditions, that the evidence that the artists worked side-by-side in creating these two pictures is compelling. Interestingly, the Renoir, acquired as a bequest from Raymond Koechlin in 1931, is dated 'circa 1869' in the 1990 catalogue of the Orsay's collection (Catalogue sommaire illustré des peintures, Paris, 1990, pp. 394-395).
Monet and Renoir famously worked side-by-side in the earlier 1870s at Argenteuil and elsewhere along the Seine, and the open, painterly style of the present work and the Orsay Renoir, notwithstanding the differing datings given the works elsewhere (a date of 'circa 1880' has been proposed for the present work), suggests perhaps an argument for mid-1870s dating for both the Renoir and Bord de Seine à Port-Villez.
Port-Villez lies on the left bank of the Seine, around a mile from Giverny to where Monet moved permanently in 1883. However, the present work indicates that Monet visited the area before his move to Giverny, which is certainly plausible as Vétheuil, where he had spent much of the previous five years, is only a few miles up-river from Port-Villez. In the present work Monet has taken a position on the same bank as Port-Villez looking northward, down-river, with the flood plain of Limetz visible on the far bank. Monet was to paint at Port-Villez on a number of occasions over subsequent years, even choosing it as a site for a series of paintings in the 1890s.
There exists a picture of the same view executed by Pierre-Auguste Renoir entitled Chalands sur la Seine and housed today in the Musée d'Orsay (fig. 1). So similar are the pictures in terms of subject - the procession of chalands, or barges, seems only fractionally further advanced in the Monet - and blustery weather conditions, that the evidence that the artists worked side-by-side in creating these two pictures is compelling. Interestingly, the Renoir, acquired as a bequest from Raymond Koechlin in 1931, is dated 'circa 1869' in the 1990 catalogue of the Orsay's collection (Catalogue sommaire illustré des peintures, Paris, 1990, pp. 394-395).
Monet and Renoir famously worked side-by-side in the earlier 1870s at Argenteuil and elsewhere along the Seine, and the open, painterly style of the present work and the Orsay Renoir, notwithstanding the differing datings given the works elsewhere (a date of 'circa 1880' has been proposed for the present work), suggests perhaps an argument for mid-1870s dating for both the Renoir and Bord de Seine à Port-Villez.