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Lot Essay
Claude Monet’s La Seine à Lavacourt, débâcle is a remarkable example from a suite of seventeen oil paintings the artist created depicting a dramatic meteorological event that took place in the first days of 1880. The winter of 1879-1880 was one of Europe’s coldest on record, with relentless snowfalls and heavy frosts throughout the months of December and January, bringing Paris and its environs to a halt. In the first days of the new year the frozen Seine began to thaw, dislodging large ice floes which inundated the banks of the river, pulling trees, bridges, and houses down. Monet’s neighbor and future companion Alice Hoschedé described the phenomenon in a letter to her then husband in January 1880, shortly after the event: “At five in the morning I was woken up by a frightful noise like the rumbling of thunder… on top of this noise came cries from Lavacourt; very quickly I was at the windows and despite considerable obscurity saw white masses hurling about. This time it was the débâcle, the real thing” (quoted in D. Joel, Monet at Vétheuil and on the Norman Coast 1878-1883, Woodbridge, 2002, p. 93).
The year prior, Monet had moved from Argenteuil, further down the Seine, to Vétheuil, a small medieval village located some forty miles northwest of Paris. He and his family, along with the Hoschedés and their children, shared a house on the river, and Monet would often take a small boat out to paint. The day after the catastrophic breaking of the ice, Monet hired a carriage and set off with Alice and their various children to explore the surrounding countryside and witness what had transpired. The plain behind Lavacourt, a small village across the river from Vétheuil, was strewn with blocks of ice and the little islands on the Seine had disappeared. That afternoon, things grew calm, and a procession of ice floes drifted down the river. In a later letter, Monet described the beauty of the frozen landscape as “heart-rending” (quoted in D. Wildenstein, Monet or the Triumph of Impressionism, Cologne, 1999, p. 152).
Despite the calamity of the event, Monet was fascinated by the natural beauty of the ice on the river. The artist had long shown an interest in both winter scenes and depicting the fleeting and changing nature of water. In his paintings of the débâcle, he sought to capture the effect of the moment the ice split to pieces and was carried by the current, studying the changes this event wrought on the river and its surroundings over the following days. Eager to seize the opportunity presented, Monet braved exceptionally harsh weather conditions to paint his motif en plein air, pushing aside ice floes as he crossed by boat to Lavacourt, filling his pockets with hot bottles to maintain warmth.
Likely painted in the first days of 1880, La Seine à Lavacourt, débâcle is a sweeping scene offering a serene view of the thawing river, depicting the Seine looping upstream from the Vétheuil bank, with Lavacourt on the right. The painting has a particularly elongated landscape format, broken only by the vertical thrust of the trees and their reflection in the water. Monet vacillates between free, quick brushstrokes noted in the intense, Impressionistic depiction of the sky and tufts of clouds, and the more deliberate rendering of the quiet river, dotted with the finely executed remnants of the ice and of the village in the distance. The overall scene is treated in a soft palette befitting of the frigid weather, and the sense of peace is amplified by the dappling of pastel oranges and pinks. These canvases display a sustained effort to capture a single subject in all its moods, and from various perspectives, showcasing Monet’s earnest and attentive attempts to paint nature’s enigmatic temporality and permanence.
Monet sold La Seine à Lavacourt, débâcle to Paul Durand-Ruel in the opening months of the following year, at which point the artist signed the canvas and dated it 1881. It was subsequently bought by the esteemed entrepreneur and prolific collector Catholina Lambert, who had amassed one of the finest private art collections in the United States. Lambert’s now disseminated collection included paintings by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Camille Pissarro, Eugène Delacroix and Camille Corot, and works by Renaissance masters such as Sandro Botticelli and Andrea del Sarto. Works from his collections are now in prominent institutions such as The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, The Brooklyn Museum, and The National Gallery in London. Lambert later sold La Seine à Lavacourt, débâcle to Paul Durand-Ruel in New York, from whom it was acquired by George Washington Vanderbilt III in 1892, and it remained with the Vanderbilt family for nearly a century.
The year prior, Monet had moved from Argenteuil, further down the Seine, to Vétheuil, a small medieval village located some forty miles northwest of Paris. He and his family, along with the Hoschedés and their children, shared a house on the river, and Monet would often take a small boat out to paint. The day after the catastrophic breaking of the ice, Monet hired a carriage and set off with Alice and their various children to explore the surrounding countryside and witness what had transpired. The plain behind Lavacourt, a small village across the river from Vétheuil, was strewn with blocks of ice and the little islands on the Seine had disappeared. That afternoon, things grew calm, and a procession of ice floes drifted down the river. In a later letter, Monet described the beauty of the frozen landscape as “heart-rending” (quoted in D. Wildenstein, Monet or the Triumph of Impressionism, Cologne, 1999, p. 152).
Despite the calamity of the event, Monet was fascinated by the natural beauty of the ice on the river. The artist had long shown an interest in both winter scenes and depicting the fleeting and changing nature of water. In his paintings of the débâcle, he sought to capture the effect of the moment the ice split to pieces and was carried by the current, studying the changes this event wrought on the river and its surroundings over the following days. Eager to seize the opportunity presented, Monet braved exceptionally harsh weather conditions to paint his motif en plein air, pushing aside ice floes as he crossed by boat to Lavacourt, filling his pockets with hot bottles to maintain warmth.
Likely painted in the first days of 1880, La Seine à Lavacourt, débâcle is a sweeping scene offering a serene view of the thawing river, depicting the Seine looping upstream from the Vétheuil bank, with Lavacourt on the right. The painting has a particularly elongated landscape format, broken only by the vertical thrust of the trees and their reflection in the water. Monet vacillates between free, quick brushstrokes noted in the intense, Impressionistic depiction of the sky and tufts of clouds, and the more deliberate rendering of the quiet river, dotted with the finely executed remnants of the ice and of the village in the distance. The overall scene is treated in a soft palette befitting of the frigid weather, and the sense of peace is amplified by the dappling of pastel oranges and pinks. These canvases display a sustained effort to capture a single subject in all its moods, and from various perspectives, showcasing Monet’s earnest and attentive attempts to paint nature’s enigmatic temporality and permanence.
Monet sold La Seine à Lavacourt, débâcle to Paul Durand-Ruel in the opening months of the following year, at which point the artist signed the canvas and dated it 1881. It was subsequently bought by the esteemed entrepreneur and prolific collector Catholina Lambert, who had amassed one of the finest private art collections in the United States. Lambert’s now disseminated collection included paintings by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Camille Pissarro, Eugène Delacroix and Camille Corot, and works by Renaissance masters such as Sandro Botticelli and Andrea del Sarto. Works from his collections are now in prominent institutions such as The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, The Brooklyn Museum, and The National Gallery in London. Lambert later sold La Seine à Lavacourt, débâcle to Paul Durand-Ruel in New York, from whom it was acquired by George Washington Vanderbilt III in 1892, and it remained with the Vanderbilt family for nearly a century.