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Lot Essay
The paintings that Monet executed in Holland during the summer of 1871 mark an important turning point in his artistic development. The twenty-three landscapes to survive from Monet's four-month Dutch sojourn represent the first sizable group of works that the artist was to make in a single place and on a single campaign; as such, they launch the increasingly productive period of the 1870s and anticipate the serial approach of Monet's later career. Moreover, it is in the Holland landscapes that we see for the first time the delicate, transparent brushwork that would come to characterize Monet's brand of Impressionism, used above all to depict the flickering reflections of light on rippling water. Pictures like the present one display many of the components that were to make the artist's next series of landscapes, his views of the Seine at Argenteuil, among his most successful ever: a rapid, energetic brushstroke; a light, airy palette dominated by blues, greens, and whites, enlivened by patches of vivid local color; and a balanced yet dynamic composition, the horizon set low beneath a broad, luminous sky, the ground divided into three compositional sections triangular in shape. Finally, the Holland pictures stand on their own as testament to Monet's mastery of landscape painting, effectively capturing the picturesque charm and enveloping atmosphere of the village of Zaandam where the artist, his wife, and his four-year-old son Jean spent the summer of 1871.
The Monet family left for Holland in May, traveling by boat from London, where they had taken refuge in the autumn of 1870 at the start of the Franco-Prussian War. Their decision to delay return to France was presumably due to continued political instability near Paris. However, the choice of the Netherlands as their specific destination certainly reflects the long line of French painters who had found artistic inspiration there previously, including Corot, Courbet, Manet, and Jongkind. It has also been suggested that Durand-Ruel, whom Monet had met in London, may have encouraged the trip, knowing how much French clients liked Dutch scenes.
Monet and his family arrived in late May or early June in Zaandam, a hamlet of 12,000 people not far from Amsterdam, surrounded by canals and dotted with windmills. Monet was captivated by the Dutch landscape from the start, and on June 2nd he wrote to Camille Pissarro:
We have finally arrived at the end of our journey, after a rather unpleasant crossing. We traversed almost the whole length of Holland and, to be sure, what I saw of it seemed far more beautiful than it is said to be. Zaandam is particularly remarkable and there is enough to paint here for a lifetime (D. Wildenstein, op. cit., p. 58).
Monet settled in the Hôtel de Beurs (fig. 1), a simple inn a few yards from the Dam, in a room with tall windows and a balcony overlooking the harbor; the view from the room is documented in a painting that the artist made upon his arrival (W188; Private Collection). Also installed at the Hôtel de Beurs were the Frenchmen Henry Havard, an art critic, historian, and travel writer, and Henri Michel-Levy, a painter. Monet was pleased with the Hôtel and delighted by the range of artistic motifs that his new surroundings afforded; on June 17th, he wrote to Pissarro:
As far as we are concerned, we have very good accommodation here and shall remain for the summer; then I may go to Paris, but for the moment there is work to be done, this is a super place for painting, there are the most amusing things everywhere. Houses of all colors, hundreds of windmills and enchanting boats, extremely friendly Dutchmen who almost all speak French. Moreover, the weather is very fine, so that I have already started on a number of canvases . . . (ibid., vol. I, p. 59).
That Monet should have spoken so fondly of Zaandam is not surprising; the town was reputed among nineteenth-century travelers as a spot of unparalleled charm. In addition to the windmills that lined the river Zaan, the village was notable for the quaint wooden houses that overlooked its harbor, painted in a variety of vivid colors. In a memoir of his travels in Holland published in 1859, the poet and art critic Maxime du Camp described Zaandam as follows:
It is lively, genial and very highly-colored. The bowsprits of the boats nudge the quay, where there are rows of wooden houses painted green, grey and pink, set off with bright hues, surprisingly cheerful and a feast for the eyes... (quoted in Monet in Holland exh. cat., op. cit., Amsterdam, 1986-1987, p. 29).
A more detailed description is provided by Henry Havard, the writer who resided alongside Monet at the Hôtel de Beurs; when Havard left Zaandam in July of 1871, Monet gave him as a momento a painting which depicts a picturesque corner of the town (W191a; Musée des Ursulines, Mâcon, France). In an 1876 text entitled Amsterdam et Venise, Havard wrote at length of Zaandam:
Straight ahead of us we see the pretty village cheerfully spread out amid a mass of foliage. The houses are black or grey, yellow or green, with bizarre shapes and odd decorations... The church with its pointed steeple, the town hall and that inn with a balcony that has such an oriental look about it [the Hôtel de Beurs] admirably complete this extraordinary tableau. All those small houses scattered haphazardly on both sides of the lock...all those boats with their brown hulls, their red sails and their little flags make up the strangest harmony. . . Brick-red, chrome-yellow, black and spinach green clash with each other, resulting in the most unusual composition of sharp tones that one could wish for. But all this is softened, tempered and as if melted by the luminous atmosphere in which all is bathed and which succeeds in fusing all these crude colours into a whole that only pleases, and is a treat to behold (quoted in ibid., p. 30).
Havard then goes on to describe the river Zaan as:
. . . the loveliest river one could hope to find. Wide, calm and full to the brim it flows between two banks covered with trees and flowers, among which nestle a multitude of houses, belvederes, kiosks constructed of wood and painted in the most diverse and the strangest of colors. The tall trees and absurd houses are mirrored in the river, which also reflects the blue sky with its big white clouds. Picture this to yourself for a moment and you will fancy yourself instantly transported... (ibid., p. 31).
Zaandam provided Monet with ample material for painting, and his sojourn there proved extremely fruitful. Between his arrival at Zaandam in early June and his departure for Amsterdam on October 8th, Monet made at least twenty-three views of the town and its environs (W170-191a), along with numerous sketches (Musée Marmottan, Paris) and a portrait of a local woman, Guurtje van de Stadt (W192; Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo). By contrast, he is known to have executed only six paintings during the eight months that he spent in London in 1870 and 1871. At Zaandam, Monet concentrated his artistic efforts on four topographical regions: the harbor near the Dam and its immediate vicinity; the canals to the north-west and the south-east of the Dam; and the area north of the Dam along the Zaan (the Achterzaan). The present picture forms part of the final group, depicting a small canal, the Noordervaldeursloot, which runs east at a right angle to the Zaan some kilometers north of the Dam. The painting was made from the lock at the intersection of the river and the canal, looking east along the length of the latter, a motif also used for nineteenth-century postcards of Zaandam (fig. 2). The various mills featured in Monet's picture have been identified as the dye-woodmill "De Sluiswachter" and the oilmills "Het Oude Kaar," "De Quack," "Het huis te Muiden" and "De Kaver." A rapid drawing that Monet made in his sketchbook depicts the two mills in the foreground of the painting (Musée Marmottan, Paris), but no other version in oil exists of the same view.
Three motifs appear to have preoccupied Monet at Zaandam: houses, windmills, and boats. All three figure prominently in the present picture. The painting is remarkable for its masterful evocation of the picturesque Dutch countryside: the whirling mills that dominate the horizon; the quaint, brightly colored cottages that line the quay; the boat that drifts along the river, its white sail billowing; the cows that graze on the verdant left bank; the vast, pale sky and the subtly shimmering waters. Describing the Zaandam pictures, Ronald Pickvance has written:
. . . they have their own authentic voice. Monet captures the Dutchness, not merely externally--of fishing boat and windmill, town house and luchthuis, river and canal--but also the delicate enveloping light and atmosphere, subtly different from the luminosity of the Ile de France. The superb manner in which he registers the immense and often changing Dutch skies is sufficient proof of this (ibid., p. 101).
Although Monet's paintings from Zaandam were never exhibited as a series, as individual images they gained prompt critical acclaim. Durand-Ruel purchased at least eleven of them from the artist during 1872 and 1873, and Monet selected three (W172, 177, 184) for his first one-man show at Durand-Ruel's gallery in March 1873. Three months after Monet's departure from Zaandam, Eugène Boudin saw the views that Monet had made there, and wrote to a friend: "[Monet] has brought some very beautiful studies from Holland and I believe that he is meant to take one of the leading places in our school" (quoted in ibid., p. 101). In fact, Boudin was so delighted by the scenery that Monet depicted that he elected to travel to Holland the following year. Also impressed by Monet's views of Zaandam was Charles Daubigny, who himself had been in Holland in September of 1871; upon his return to Paris, Daubigny purchased from Durand-Ruel one of the Monet landscapes, La Zaan à Zaandam (W172; Private Collection). Monet made at least two more trips to Holland over the course of his career, one to Amsterdam early in 1873 or 1874 (see W298-309) and one to the tulip fields east of Leiden in April and May of 1886 (see W1067-1071). Yet the memory of his first sojourn in the Netherlands remained vivid, and some three decades later, in 1904, Jean-Baptiste Armand Guillaumin traveled to Zaandam on Monet's advice, painting many of the same motifs that had captivated the older artist in 1871.
Examples of Monet's work from Zaandam are now housed in major museums around the world, including: Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (W186; fig. 3); Musée d'Orsay, Paris (W183); Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen (W177; fig. 4); Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (W178); and Nationalmuseum, Stockholm (W179).
(fig. 1) Postcard of the harbor at Zaandam, with the Hôtel de Beurs at right, circa 1870.
(fig. 2) Postcard of the mills along the Noordervaldeursloot, circa 1890.
(fig. 3) Claude Monet, Zaandam, 1871.
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
(fig. 4) Claude Monet, Moulin à Zaandam, 1871.
Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen.
The Monet family left for Holland in May, traveling by boat from London, where they had taken refuge in the autumn of 1870 at the start of the Franco-Prussian War. Their decision to delay return to France was presumably due to continued political instability near Paris. However, the choice of the Netherlands as their specific destination certainly reflects the long line of French painters who had found artistic inspiration there previously, including Corot, Courbet, Manet, and Jongkind. It has also been suggested that Durand-Ruel, whom Monet had met in London, may have encouraged the trip, knowing how much French clients liked Dutch scenes.
Monet and his family arrived in late May or early June in Zaandam, a hamlet of 12,000 people not far from Amsterdam, surrounded by canals and dotted with windmills. Monet was captivated by the Dutch landscape from the start, and on June 2nd he wrote to Camille Pissarro:
We have finally arrived at the end of our journey, after a rather unpleasant crossing. We traversed almost the whole length of Holland and, to be sure, what I saw of it seemed far more beautiful than it is said to be. Zaandam is particularly remarkable and there is enough to paint here for a lifetime (D. Wildenstein, op. cit., p. 58).
Monet settled in the Hôtel de Beurs (fig. 1), a simple inn a few yards from the Dam, in a room with tall windows and a balcony overlooking the harbor; the view from the room is documented in a painting that the artist made upon his arrival (W188; Private Collection). Also installed at the Hôtel de Beurs were the Frenchmen Henry Havard, an art critic, historian, and travel writer, and Henri Michel-Levy, a painter. Monet was pleased with the Hôtel and delighted by the range of artistic motifs that his new surroundings afforded; on June 17th, he wrote to Pissarro:
As far as we are concerned, we have very good accommodation here and shall remain for the summer; then I may go to Paris, but for the moment there is work to be done, this is a super place for painting, there are the most amusing things everywhere. Houses of all colors, hundreds of windmills and enchanting boats, extremely friendly Dutchmen who almost all speak French. Moreover, the weather is very fine, so that I have already started on a number of canvases . . . (ibid., vol. I, p. 59).
That Monet should have spoken so fondly of Zaandam is not surprising; the town was reputed among nineteenth-century travelers as a spot of unparalleled charm. In addition to the windmills that lined the river Zaan, the village was notable for the quaint wooden houses that overlooked its harbor, painted in a variety of vivid colors. In a memoir of his travels in Holland published in 1859, the poet and art critic Maxime du Camp described Zaandam as follows:
It is lively, genial and very highly-colored. The bowsprits of the boats nudge the quay, where there are rows of wooden houses painted green, grey and pink, set off with bright hues, surprisingly cheerful and a feast for the eyes... (quoted in Monet in Holland exh. cat., op. cit., Amsterdam, 1986-1987, p. 29).
A more detailed description is provided by Henry Havard, the writer who resided alongside Monet at the Hôtel de Beurs; when Havard left Zaandam in July of 1871, Monet gave him as a momento a painting which depicts a picturesque corner of the town (W191a; Musée des Ursulines, Mâcon, France). In an 1876 text entitled Amsterdam et Venise, Havard wrote at length of Zaandam:
Straight ahead of us we see the pretty village cheerfully spread out amid a mass of foliage. The houses are black or grey, yellow or green, with bizarre shapes and odd decorations... The church with its pointed steeple, the town hall and that inn with a balcony that has such an oriental look about it [the Hôtel de Beurs] admirably complete this extraordinary tableau. All those small houses scattered haphazardly on both sides of the lock...all those boats with their brown hulls, their red sails and their little flags make up the strangest harmony. . . Brick-red, chrome-yellow, black and spinach green clash with each other, resulting in the most unusual composition of sharp tones that one could wish for. But all this is softened, tempered and as if melted by the luminous atmosphere in which all is bathed and which succeeds in fusing all these crude colours into a whole that only pleases, and is a treat to behold (quoted in ibid., p. 30).
Havard then goes on to describe the river Zaan as:
. . . the loveliest river one could hope to find. Wide, calm and full to the brim it flows between two banks covered with trees and flowers, among which nestle a multitude of houses, belvederes, kiosks constructed of wood and painted in the most diverse and the strangest of colors. The tall trees and absurd houses are mirrored in the river, which also reflects the blue sky with its big white clouds. Picture this to yourself for a moment and you will fancy yourself instantly transported... (ibid., p. 31).
Zaandam provided Monet with ample material for painting, and his sojourn there proved extremely fruitful. Between his arrival at Zaandam in early June and his departure for Amsterdam on October 8th, Monet made at least twenty-three views of the town and its environs (W170-191a), along with numerous sketches (Musée Marmottan, Paris) and a portrait of a local woman, Guurtje van de Stadt (W192; Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo). By contrast, he is known to have executed only six paintings during the eight months that he spent in London in 1870 and 1871. At Zaandam, Monet concentrated his artistic efforts on four topographical regions: the harbor near the Dam and its immediate vicinity; the canals to the north-west and the south-east of the Dam; and the area north of the Dam along the Zaan (the Achterzaan). The present picture forms part of the final group, depicting a small canal, the Noordervaldeursloot, which runs east at a right angle to the Zaan some kilometers north of the Dam. The painting was made from the lock at the intersection of the river and the canal, looking east along the length of the latter, a motif also used for nineteenth-century postcards of Zaandam (fig. 2). The various mills featured in Monet's picture have been identified as the dye-woodmill "De Sluiswachter" and the oilmills "Het Oude Kaar," "De Quack," "Het huis te Muiden" and "De Kaver." A rapid drawing that Monet made in his sketchbook depicts the two mills in the foreground of the painting (Musée Marmottan, Paris), but no other version in oil exists of the same view.
Three motifs appear to have preoccupied Monet at Zaandam: houses, windmills, and boats. All three figure prominently in the present picture. The painting is remarkable for its masterful evocation of the picturesque Dutch countryside: the whirling mills that dominate the horizon; the quaint, brightly colored cottages that line the quay; the boat that drifts along the river, its white sail billowing; the cows that graze on the verdant left bank; the vast, pale sky and the subtly shimmering waters. Describing the Zaandam pictures, Ronald Pickvance has written:
. . . they have their own authentic voice. Monet captures the Dutchness, not merely externally--of fishing boat and windmill, town house and luchthuis, river and canal--but also the delicate enveloping light and atmosphere, subtly different from the luminosity of the Ile de France. The superb manner in which he registers the immense and often changing Dutch skies is sufficient proof of this (ibid., p. 101).
Although Monet's paintings from Zaandam were never exhibited as a series, as individual images they gained prompt critical acclaim. Durand-Ruel purchased at least eleven of them from the artist during 1872 and 1873, and Monet selected three (W172, 177, 184) for his first one-man show at Durand-Ruel's gallery in March 1873. Three months after Monet's departure from Zaandam, Eugène Boudin saw the views that Monet had made there, and wrote to a friend: "[Monet] has brought some very beautiful studies from Holland and I believe that he is meant to take one of the leading places in our school" (quoted in ibid., p. 101). In fact, Boudin was so delighted by the scenery that Monet depicted that he elected to travel to Holland the following year. Also impressed by Monet's views of Zaandam was Charles Daubigny, who himself had been in Holland in September of 1871; upon his return to Paris, Daubigny purchased from Durand-Ruel one of the Monet landscapes, La Zaan à Zaandam (W172; Private Collection). Monet made at least two more trips to Holland over the course of his career, one to Amsterdam early in 1873 or 1874 (see W298-309) and one to the tulip fields east of Leiden in April and May of 1886 (see W1067-1071). Yet the memory of his first sojourn in the Netherlands remained vivid, and some three decades later, in 1904, Jean-Baptiste Armand Guillaumin traveled to Zaandam on Monet's advice, painting many of the same motifs that had captivated the older artist in 1871.
Examples of Monet's work from Zaandam are now housed in major museums around the world, including: Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (W186; fig. 3); Musée d'Orsay, Paris (W183); Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen (W177; fig. 4); Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (W178); and Nationalmuseum, Stockholm (W179).
(fig. 1) Postcard of the harbor at Zaandam, with the Hôtel de Beurs at right, circa 1870.
(fig. 2) Postcard of the mills along the Noordervaldeursloot, circa 1890.
(fig. 3) Claude Monet, Zaandam, 1871.
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
(fig. 4) Claude Monet, Moulin à Zaandam, 1871.
Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen.