Lot Essay
In 1882 Claude Monet spent two highly productive periods on the Normandy coast, from early February to early April and then from mid-June to early October. He was delighted with the site, and channeled his enthusiasm directly into painting, working on as many as eight separate canvases in one day, and producing about one hundred pictures in total during his stay. As Robert Gorden and Andrew Forge have commented, for Monet, "1882 was a year of almost superhuman productivity" (R. Gordon and A. Forge, op. cit., p. 95). The present work depicts the sailors' church at Varengeville. To obtain this view, the artist worked from rocks that emerged only at low tide. Robert Herbert has said of this picture:
The effect of morning is to reveal, in glaring light, the monumental rise of the cliff and the diminutive, nearly fragile character of the church. The free-flowing colors of the cliff, which represent the stains that run down from the soil above, do not vaporize the mass of stone, because they are embraced in a sculptural modeling in which cool, darker colors contrast with warm, lighter ones. Tiny figures on the shore below, once they are spotted, further contribute to the massive scale of the cliff. They act as witnesses to the sublime power of the escarpment and remind us that all the Varengeville pictures, with or without human figures, put us in the position of the traveler who has sought out a romantic landscape. (R. Herbert, op. cit., p. 59)
And in a moving exegesis, Paul Tucker has written about it:
The irregularity of the sheer rock wall is fully evident from the chiaroscuro which Monet now employs with great subtlety. The almost frightening way in which the cliff attains its staggering height from its absolutely flat footings in the sand is suggested by the multiple, sometimes quite bizarre, colors that Monet applies with considerable gusto. In contrast to this shrill palette and tangle of brushstrokes, Monet makes the church appear steadfast and firm. He illuminates it with crisp, even light and sets it against soft cumulus clouds, the latter cushioning the structure while countering the vertical thrust of the cliffs below. Like the customs house, the church takes on several personae. It too is like a ship navigating its way through perilous waters, or a stand-in for the seafaring family anxiously awaiting the return of a loved one. With its strong geometric forms contrasting with the tumultuous ones on which it stands, the structure also speaks about the ways in which the human has rationalized the world using its mental powers to fashion moral and intellectual shelters from the chaos of nature while attempting to become one with it.
Monet was not a religious man, but he painted this church more than half a dozen times in 1882, often evoking these very associations. They would have been especially appropriate for this particular church, as it sat on the bluff like a lighthouse or sailors' refuge. In addition, it was one of the oldest structures in the region, dating back to the thirteenth century. Its interior design...strongly recalled not the mysterious heavens of most Gothic churches but the hulls of ocean-going ships. Even the cemetery, which lay at the front of the church and was filled with the deceased of local fishing families, had tombstones that contained nautical references and symbols for the sea. Little wonder, therefore, that Monet painted it so frequently; it clearly spoke on numerous levels about the human and the natural. (P.H. Tucker, op. cit., pp. 112-113)
The effect of morning is to reveal, in glaring light, the monumental rise of the cliff and the diminutive, nearly fragile character of the church. The free-flowing colors of the cliff, which represent the stains that run down from the soil above, do not vaporize the mass of stone, because they are embraced in a sculptural modeling in which cool, darker colors contrast with warm, lighter ones. Tiny figures on the shore below, once they are spotted, further contribute to the massive scale of the cliff. They act as witnesses to the sublime power of the escarpment and remind us that all the Varengeville pictures, with or without human figures, put us in the position of the traveler who has sought out a romantic landscape. (R. Herbert, op. cit., p. 59)
And in a moving exegesis, Paul Tucker has written about it:
The irregularity of the sheer rock wall is fully evident from the chiaroscuro which Monet now employs with great subtlety. The almost frightening way in which the cliff attains its staggering height from its absolutely flat footings in the sand is suggested by the multiple, sometimes quite bizarre, colors that Monet applies with considerable gusto. In contrast to this shrill palette and tangle of brushstrokes, Monet makes the church appear steadfast and firm. He illuminates it with crisp, even light and sets it against soft cumulus clouds, the latter cushioning the structure while countering the vertical thrust of the cliffs below. Like the customs house, the church takes on several personae. It too is like a ship navigating its way through perilous waters, or a stand-in for the seafaring family anxiously awaiting the return of a loved one. With its strong geometric forms contrasting with the tumultuous ones on which it stands, the structure also speaks about the ways in which the human has rationalized the world using its mental powers to fashion moral and intellectual shelters from the chaos of nature while attempting to become one with it.
Monet was not a religious man, but he painted this church more than half a dozen times in 1882, often evoking these very associations. They would have been especially appropriate for this particular church, as it sat on the bluff like a lighthouse or sailors' refuge. In addition, it was one of the oldest structures in the region, dating back to the thirteenth century. Its interior design...strongly recalled not the mysterious heavens of most Gothic churches but the hulls of ocean-going ships. Even the cemetery, which lay at the front of the church and was filled with the deceased of local fishing families, had tombstones that contained nautical references and symbols for the sea. Little wonder, therefore, that Monet painted it so frequently; it clearly spoke on numerous levels about the human and the natural. (P.H. Tucker, op. cit., pp. 112-113)