.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
Picturing a sun-dappled scene in late summer, Pommiers, Vétheuil was painted in 1878, not long after Claude Monet had moved to the pretty rural village of Vétheuil. Here Monet plunged himself into nature in its purest form, capturing the changing effects of weather and time on the landscape in a manner that would define his practice for the rest of his life. This painting also has a particularly fascinating history—part of the legendary collection of the Impressionist artist and key supporter, Gustave Caillebotte, it was included in the Fourth Impressionist exhibition of 1879, an important moment that marked the close of the first decade of this revolutionary movement.
I have set up shop on the banks of the Seine at Vétheuil in a ravishing spot. Claude Monet
The fourth exhibition of Impressionism opened in Paris in the spring of 1879. The planning of this show had been particularly fraught. Some of the key protagonists, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Paul Cezanne, had defected to the Salon, believing this was a better route to success. Others, like Claude Monet and Alfred Sisley, discouraged by the continued poor reception with which their work was met, had begun to question whether exhibiting in an independent show was the right way to gain artistic renown and financial security. Through the opening months of 1879, the chief instigators of the exhibition, Gustave Caillebotte, Edgar Degas, and Camille Pissarro attempted to galvanize their peers. “Sisley declines,” Degas wrote to Caillebotte in March of this year. “I saw Pissarro this morning; Cezanne is going to arrive in several days, and Guillaumin will see him then. Monet still only knows one thing—that he is not sending to the Salon… Mlle Cassatt is seeing Mlle Morisot tomorrow and will know her decision. We are therefore almost certainly: Caillebotte, Pissarro, Cassatt, Morisot, Monet, Cezanne…” (quoted in The New Painting: Impressionism, 1874-1886, exh. cat., National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1986, pp. 246-247).
Monet’s contribution was far from certain however. “I am giving up the struggle as well as all hope; I don’t have the strength to work any more under these conditions. I hear that my friends are preparing a new exhibition this year; I renounce taking part in it,” he had written despairingly to one of his early patrons, Georges de Bellio, in early March 1879 (ibid., p. 246). A few weeks later, Caillebotte wrote to him to try and convince him to exhibit, “Try then not to discourage yourself… I will take care of everything. Send me a catalogue [a list of works] immediately… Put down as many canvases as you can. I wager that you will have a superb exhibition. You get discouraged in a frightening way. If you could see how youthful Pissarro is! Come…” (ibid., pp. 247-248). Caillebotte’s cajoling worked, and Monet agreed to join the show, albeit reluctantly, “so as not to be thought a slacker” (ibid., p. 248).
For the painters and for the public... we have achieved much. Gustave Caillebotte
When the exhibition opened on 10 April, there were sixteen participants. In the end Cezanne, Renoir, Sisley, and Morisot all declined, but Marie Bracquemond and her husband Félix, Caillebotte, Mary Cassatt, Degas, Jean-Louis Forain, Monet, Pissarro, and Henri Rouart, among others, were all included. Despite much of the skepticism and resistance in the run up to the show, this fourth Impressionist exhibition was one of the largest and most successful of the series. Almost 16,000 visitors came to see many of what are now considered masterpieces of Impressionism, held in an opulent apartment at 28 avenue de l’Opéra. Among these were Caillebotte’s Vue de toits (Effet de neige) (Musée d'Orsay, Paris), Cassatt’s Femme dans une loge (Philadelphia Museum of Art), Degas’s soaring dancer, Miss Lala, au Cirque Fernando (National Gallery, London), and Monet’s 1867 Jardin à Sainte-Adresse (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York). “We are saved,” Caillebotte wrote to Monet at the end of the first day, “By five o’clock this evening receipts were more than 400 francs. Two years ago on the opening day—which is the worst—we had less than 350… There are some marvelous things. I hope that you will come to Paris between now and the close and see the show” (ibid., p. 250).
Twenty-nine works by Monet were included in the catalogue, most of which were lent by collectors. With works from the 1860s to the present day, the size and breadth of his showing meant that this exhibition served as a first retrospective for the artist. One of the most recent works was Pommiers, Vétheuil, painted in 1878 in the countryside around the artist’s new home at Vétheuil. This luminous canvas depicting a late summer’s day was acquired by Caillebotte, in whose collection it remained for the rest of his life. “I regret you could not follow the show from close at hand,” Caillebotte wrote in another missive of encouragement to Monet after the exhibition had closed. “But for the painters and for the public, despite the malevolence of the press, we have achieved much. Manet himself is beginning to see that he has taken the wrong road. Courage then!” (ibid., p. 261).
Monet painted Pommiers, Vétheuil the prior autumn, shortly after he and his family had moved to Vétheuil, a small, rural village situated north of Paris, set on a wide bend of the Seine. In search of new subjects with which to reinvigorate his painting, Monet and his family had left Argenteuil in January 1878, and after a stay in the capital, arrived in Vétheuil in September of this year. The town and its environs provided ample inspiration for the artist, as he wrote happily to a friend on 1 September, “I have set up shop on the banks of the Seine at Vétheuil in a ravishing spot” (quoted in D. Wildenstein, Monet or the Triumph of Impressionism, Cologne, 1999, p. 137).
Monet spent the next three and a half years in Vétheuil. Despite personal turmoil and family tragedy—his beloved wife Camille died in September 1879—as well as financial hardship, this was a period of extraordinary productivity that saw Monet forge a new direction in his art. It was there that Monet embraced the landscape in its purest form, expunging traces of modernity and human presence to instead focus on capturing the ephemeral and fugitive effects of light and atmosphere on this picturesque corner of the Île de France. As Paul Hayes Tucker has described, “Monet appears alone in a place where earth and sky, land and water, the artist and the environment are in perfect accord… There is a new kind of order [in his depictions of Vétheuil]; it is nature’s, not man’s” (Claude Monet: Life and Art, New Haven, 1995, p. 101).
Monet immediately began to paint his new surroundings, exploring the quiet banks of the river, verdant orchards, and the village, which was clustered around a statuesque church. Pommiers, Vétheuil is one of four works from this early moment of joyful discovery that depicts apple trees laden with fruit in the sun-filled late summer days (Wildenstein, nos. 488-491). Each canvas depicts a different spot, as Monet spent his days roaming the environs around his home.
The present work depicts the foot of the Chantemesle hills. Under a powder blue, cloud flecked sky, an apple tree bursts across the surface of the canvas, its red fruit and verdant leaves rendered with stippled brushstrokes that conjure the pleasant atmosphere of this sun dappled scene. Glimpsed beyond the foliage is a chalk path that winds between the hills, leading away toward the famed church of Vétheuil, whose limestone tower is just visible, nestled in the valley beyond. This striking juxtaposition of a closely cropped tree in the foreground with a sweeping sense of recession into the distance behind would become a become a frequently used compositional device in Monet’s work through the decades that followed.
After Caillebotte’s untimely death in 1894, the present work passed to his brother, Martial. In his will, Caillebotte had bequeathed his collection, which consisted of sixty-five works by Cezanne, Degas, Manet, Pissarro, Renoir, Sisley, as well as Monet, to the French government, stating that the collection should be housed at the Musée du Luxembourg, before eventually being moved to the Louvre. While the government had initially agreed to this bequest, in 1894 they declined to accept the collection in its entirety. As art historian John Rewald explained, “The prospect of seeing Impressionist pictures in a museum aroused an uproar of protest from politicians, academicians, and critics, equaling and surpassing even the insults heaps upon the painters at the occasion of their first group exhibitions” (The History of Impressionism, London, 1973, p. 570).
Renoir, the executor of Caillebotte’s will, was forced to succumb to the government’s conditions, otherwise the entire bequest would be rejected. As a result, of the sixteen works by Monet, including Pommiers, Vétheuil, only eight were admitted into the national collection. Scandal ensued and debate raged around the bequest, a reflection of the controversial place Impressionism still occupied in France over two decades after the first exhibition of the movement had been held. The present work instead remained a treasured possession, passing from the artist’s brother, Martial, by descent through the Caillebotte family. It was acquired by the family of the present owners almost sixty years ago and was most recently included in the exhibition Monet and Chicago, held at The Art Institute of Chicago in 2020-2021.
I have set up shop on the banks of the Seine at Vétheuil in a ravishing spot. Claude Monet
The fourth exhibition of Impressionism opened in Paris in the spring of 1879. The planning of this show had been particularly fraught. Some of the key protagonists, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Paul Cezanne, had defected to the Salon, believing this was a better route to success. Others, like Claude Monet and Alfred Sisley, discouraged by the continued poor reception with which their work was met, had begun to question whether exhibiting in an independent show was the right way to gain artistic renown and financial security. Through the opening months of 1879, the chief instigators of the exhibition, Gustave Caillebotte, Edgar Degas, and Camille Pissarro attempted to galvanize their peers. “Sisley declines,” Degas wrote to Caillebotte in March of this year. “I saw Pissarro this morning; Cezanne is going to arrive in several days, and Guillaumin will see him then. Monet still only knows one thing—that he is not sending to the Salon… Mlle Cassatt is seeing Mlle Morisot tomorrow and will know her decision. We are therefore almost certainly: Caillebotte, Pissarro, Cassatt, Morisot, Monet, Cezanne…” (quoted in The New Painting: Impressionism, 1874-1886, exh. cat., National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1986, pp. 246-247).
Monet’s contribution was far from certain however. “I am giving up the struggle as well as all hope; I don’t have the strength to work any more under these conditions. I hear that my friends are preparing a new exhibition this year; I renounce taking part in it,” he had written despairingly to one of his early patrons, Georges de Bellio, in early March 1879 (ibid., p. 246). A few weeks later, Caillebotte wrote to him to try and convince him to exhibit, “Try then not to discourage yourself… I will take care of everything. Send me a catalogue [a list of works] immediately… Put down as many canvases as you can. I wager that you will have a superb exhibition. You get discouraged in a frightening way. If you could see how youthful Pissarro is! Come…” (ibid., pp. 247-248). Caillebotte’s cajoling worked, and Monet agreed to join the show, albeit reluctantly, “so as not to be thought a slacker” (ibid., p. 248).
For the painters and for the public... we have achieved much. Gustave Caillebotte
When the exhibition opened on 10 April, there were sixteen participants. In the end Cezanne, Renoir, Sisley, and Morisot all declined, but Marie Bracquemond and her husband Félix, Caillebotte, Mary Cassatt, Degas, Jean-Louis Forain, Monet, Pissarro, and Henri Rouart, among others, were all included. Despite much of the skepticism and resistance in the run up to the show, this fourth Impressionist exhibition was one of the largest and most successful of the series. Almost 16,000 visitors came to see many of what are now considered masterpieces of Impressionism, held in an opulent apartment at 28 avenue de l’Opéra. Among these were Caillebotte’s Vue de toits (Effet de neige) (Musée d'Orsay, Paris), Cassatt’s Femme dans une loge (Philadelphia Museum of Art), Degas’s soaring dancer, Miss Lala, au Cirque Fernando (National Gallery, London), and Monet’s 1867 Jardin à Sainte-Adresse (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York). “We are saved,” Caillebotte wrote to Monet at the end of the first day, “By five o’clock this evening receipts were more than 400 francs. Two years ago on the opening day—which is the worst—we had less than 350… There are some marvelous things. I hope that you will come to Paris between now and the close and see the show” (ibid., p. 250).
Twenty-nine works by Monet were included in the catalogue, most of which were lent by collectors. With works from the 1860s to the present day, the size and breadth of his showing meant that this exhibition served as a first retrospective for the artist. One of the most recent works was Pommiers, Vétheuil, painted in 1878 in the countryside around the artist’s new home at Vétheuil. This luminous canvas depicting a late summer’s day was acquired by Caillebotte, in whose collection it remained for the rest of his life. “I regret you could not follow the show from close at hand,” Caillebotte wrote in another missive of encouragement to Monet after the exhibition had closed. “But for the painters and for the public, despite the malevolence of the press, we have achieved much. Manet himself is beginning to see that he has taken the wrong road. Courage then!” (ibid., p. 261).
Monet painted Pommiers, Vétheuil the prior autumn, shortly after he and his family had moved to Vétheuil, a small, rural village situated north of Paris, set on a wide bend of the Seine. In search of new subjects with which to reinvigorate his painting, Monet and his family had left Argenteuil in January 1878, and after a stay in the capital, arrived in Vétheuil in September of this year. The town and its environs provided ample inspiration for the artist, as he wrote happily to a friend on 1 September, “I have set up shop on the banks of the Seine at Vétheuil in a ravishing spot” (quoted in D. Wildenstein, Monet or the Triumph of Impressionism, Cologne, 1999, p. 137).
Monet spent the next three and a half years in Vétheuil. Despite personal turmoil and family tragedy—his beloved wife Camille died in September 1879—as well as financial hardship, this was a period of extraordinary productivity that saw Monet forge a new direction in his art. It was there that Monet embraced the landscape in its purest form, expunging traces of modernity and human presence to instead focus on capturing the ephemeral and fugitive effects of light and atmosphere on this picturesque corner of the Île de France. As Paul Hayes Tucker has described, “Monet appears alone in a place where earth and sky, land and water, the artist and the environment are in perfect accord… There is a new kind of order [in his depictions of Vétheuil]; it is nature’s, not man’s” (Claude Monet: Life and Art, New Haven, 1995, p. 101).
Monet immediately began to paint his new surroundings, exploring the quiet banks of the river, verdant orchards, and the village, which was clustered around a statuesque church. Pommiers, Vétheuil is one of four works from this early moment of joyful discovery that depicts apple trees laden with fruit in the sun-filled late summer days (Wildenstein, nos. 488-491). Each canvas depicts a different spot, as Monet spent his days roaming the environs around his home.
The present work depicts the foot of the Chantemesle hills. Under a powder blue, cloud flecked sky, an apple tree bursts across the surface of the canvas, its red fruit and verdant leaves rendered with stippled brushstrokes that conjure the pleasant atmosphere of this sun dappled scene. Glimpsed beyond the foliage is a chalk path that winds between the hills, leading away toward the famed church of Vétheuil, whose limestone tower is just visible, nestled in the valley beyond. This striking juxtaposition of a closely cropped tree in the foreground with a sweeping sense of recession into the distance behind would become a become a frequently used compositional device in Monet’s work through the decades that followed.
After Caillebotte’s untimely death in 1894, the present work passed to his brother, Martial. In his will, Caillebotte had bequeathed his collection, which consisted of sixty-five works by Cezanne, Degas, Manet, Pissarro, Renoir, Sisley, as well as Monet, to the French government, stating that the collection should be housed at the Musée du Luxembourg, before eventually being moved to the Louvre. While the government had initially agreed to this bequest, in 1894 they declined to accept the collection in its entirety. As art historian John Rewald explained, “The prospect of seeing Impressionist pictures in a museum aroused an uproar of protest from politicians, academicians, and critics, equaling and surpassing even the insults heaps upon the painters at the occasion of their first group exhibitions” (The History of Impressionism, London, 1973, p. 570).
Renoir, the executor of Caillebotte’s will, was forced to succumb to the government’s conditions, otherwise the entire bequest would be rejected. As a result, of the sixteen works by Monet, including Pommiers, Vétheuil, only eight were admitted into the national collection. Scandal ensued and debate raged around the bequest, a reflection of the controversial place Impressionism still occupied in France over two decades after the first exhibition of the movement had been held. The present work instead remained a treasured possession, passing from the artist’s brother, Martial, by descent through the Caillebotte family. It was acquired by the family of the present owners almost sixty years ago and was most recently included in the exhibition Monet and Chicago, held at The Art Institute of Chicago in 2020-2021.