拍品专文
Monet was perhaps the greatest snow scene painter in the history of western art. Over the course of his career, he painted dozens of winter pictures. While these works do not constitute a proper series, as do the artist's images of haystacks or poplars, they were made with the same intention of studying the full range of ephemeral effects of light and atmosphere.
The passion with which Monet pursued plein air painting in winter was legendary even in his own lifetime. For example, a journalist around 1867 reported seeing Monet hard at work outdoors in the dead of winter:
It was cold enough to split rocks. We perceived a foot warmer, then an easel, then a gentleman bundled up, in three overcoats, gloves on his hands, his face half frozen; it was Monet studying an effect of snow. (quoted in G. Tinterow, exh. cat., Origins of Impressionism, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1994, pp. 249-250)
Normally Monet began his winter pictures outdoors and then finished them in the studio. An example of a canvas of this type is La pie, now in the Musée d'Orsay. But given the masterly brevity of Train dans la neige à Argenteuil, with its liberal use of the brown preparatory ground as part of the image, it is likely that this work was both started and completed en plein air. Chromatically, Train dans la neige à Argenteuil is nearly a grisaille. Monet's reliance on browns and greys in the present work very accurately captures the effect of a late afternoon in winter; and the skyscape is particularly naturalistic and suggestive.
Monet and other Impressionists associated winter landscapes with Japonisme. In 1893, Pissarro, Rodin, and Monet visited an exhibition of Japanese art together, and afterwards Pissarro wrote to his son, "Good God, this decides in our favor. There are some grey sunsets that are extraordinarily impressionist" (quoted in ibid., p. 252). The next day Pissarro sent another letter to his son in which he stated, "Hiroshige is a wonderful Impressionist. Myself, Monet, and Rodin are in rapture over him. I am glad to have made my effects of snow and flood; the Japanese artists give me confirmation of our visual choice" (quoted in ibid., p. 252).
The inclusion of a train in the present work indicates the fascination with the industrial revolution which Monet felt during his years at Argenteuil. Paul Tucker has written,
Seeing the new houses and factories usurping the land that for so long had nourished the...rural traditions of Argenteuil, Monet realized that the peasant, the farmer, the vineyard owner--indeed all agrarian use of the land--were fated for extinction; that the town with its growing population and burgeoning industry would eventually absorb them and relegate them to history. Where progress was totally absent from Millet's Barbizon, it was the driving force in Monet's Argenteuil. (P. Tucker, Monet at Argenteuil, New Haven, 1982, p. 38)
In 1893, Mary Cassatt acquired the present picture for her brother Alexander. Cassatt routinely advised Alexander on the purchase of pictures by Manet, Degas, Monet, Renoir and others, helping him to build an extraordinary Impressionist collection second in his day only to that of the Havemeyer family.
The passion with which Monet pursued plein air painting in winter was legendary even in his own lifetime. For example, a journalist around 1867 reported seeing Monet hard at work outdoors in the dead of winter:
It was cold enough to split rocks. We perceived a foot warmer, then an easel, then a gentleman bundled up, in three overcoats, gloves on his hands, his face half frozen; it was Monet studying an effect of snow. (quoted in G. Tinterow, exh. cat., Origins of Impressionism, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1994, pp. 249-250)
Normally Monet began his winter pictures outdoors and then finished them in the studio. An example of a canvas of this type is La pie, now in the Musée d'Orsay. But given the masterly brevity of Train dans la neige à Argenteuil, with its liberal use of the brown preparatory ground as part of the image, it is likely that this work was both started and completed en plein air. Chromatically, Train dans la neige à Argenteuil is nearly a grisaille. Monet's reliance on browns and greys in the present work very accurately captures the effect of a late afternoon in winter; and the skyscape is particularly naturalistic and suggestive.
Monet and other Impressionists associated winter landscapes with Japonisme. In 1893, Pissarro, Rodin, and Monet visited an exhibition of Japanese art together, and afterwards Pissarro wrote to his son, "Good God, this decides in our favor. There are some grey sunsets that are extraordinarily impressionist" (quoted in ibid., p. 252). The next day Pissarro sent another letter to his son in which he stated, "Hiroshige is a wonderful Impressionist. Myself, Monet, and Rodin are in rapture over him. I am glad to have made my effects of snow and flood; the Japanese artists give me confirmation of our visual choice" (quoted in ibid., p. 252).
The inclusion of a train in the present work indicates the fascination with the industrial revolution which Monet felt during his years at Argenteuil. Paul Tucker has written,
Seeing the new houses and factories usurping the land that for so long had nourished the...rural traditions of Argenteuil, Monet realized that the peasant, the farmer, the vineyard owner--indeed all agrarian use of the land--were fated for extinction; that the town with its growing population and burgeoning industry would eventually absorb them and relegate them to history. Where progress was totally absent from Millet's Barbizon, it was the driving force in Monet's Argenteuil. (P. Tucker, Monet at Argenteuil, New Haven, 1982, p. 38)
In 1893, Mary Cassatt acquired the present picture for her brother Alexander. Cassatt routinely advised Alexander on the purchase of pictures by Manet, Degas, Monet, Renoir and others, helping him to build an extraordinary Impressionist collection second in his day only to that of the Havemeyer family.