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Lot Essay
The present work is part of Monet's celebrated Antibes series which he painted whilst in the south of France in 1888. Viewed up from the Garoupe, this particular view of Antibes depicts the Signal de Coursegoules among the mountains to the north, and the Pic de Courmettes to the left of the composition.
Claude Monet left for the South of France on 14 January 1888, just over four years after his first trip to the Riviera with Renoir in late December 1883. Whilst with Renoir, Monet explored the Mediterranean coast, where he discovered Antibes, a walled city on the Côte d'Azur, midway between Nice and Cannes, which he described as a "small fortified town, bathed to a golden crust by the sun" (quoted in J. Pissarro, Monet and the Mediterranean, exh. cat., Fort Worth, 1997, p. 42).
On the recommendation of Guy de Maupassant, Monet had arranged to stay at the Château de la Pinède, a small pension which was popular with artists, and spent his first few days exploring Antibes and its surrounding area, hiking more than fifteen miles between Monaco and Nice. By the 19th of January, he had located "five or six superb motifs", and wrote to Alice, "The weather is so admirable that it would be a crime no to set to work right away" (Ibid, p. 42).
Indeed, the Antibes landscape was a source of both inspiration and frustration for Monet. He was enthralled by the brilliant light of the Côte d'Azur. In letters to Alice, he described the southern sun as "resplendent and eternal" and wrote "what I will bring back from here will be pure, gentle sweetness: some white, some pink, and some blue, and all this surrounded by the fairytale-like air" (Iibid, p. 42).
However, the more beautiful the landscape appeared to Monet, the more difficult it was for him to capture it on canvas. In a letter to Auguste Rodin dated from early February, he likened the act of painting at Antibes to "wrestling" with the sun: "I am working from morning to evening, brimming with energy.. I'm fencing and wrestling with the sun. And what a sun it is. In order to paint here, one would need gold and precious stones. It is quite remarkable" (quoted in R. Gordon and A. Forge, Monet, New York, 1983, p. 123). In a similar vein, he further explained to Alice, "It is so bright, so pure with this pink and blue, that the slightest touch of paint that is not right looks like a stain of dirt". To Geffroy he continues, "I am digging and I am plagued by every devil. I am very worried about what I am doing. It is so beautiful here, so bright, so luminous. One swims in blue air, and it is frightening..." (quoted in J. Pissarro, Monet and the Mediterranean, exh. cat., Fort Worth, 1997, p. 44 and 120).
The climatic extremes which Monet encountered at Antibes also proved difficult. The sun was so strong at certain times that Monet suffered from eyestrain and fatigue. Gusting winds on other days forced him to chain his easel to the ground, while a ten day period of rain in mid-February obliged him to halt work altogether. Moreover, the ever-changing weather and the passage of the season created a flux of scenery which complicated the process of landscape painting. "Everything grows, everything changes before your eyes" Monet complained (Ibid, p. 45).
But despite, the challenges which Antibes presented, the artist's sojourn there was extraordinarly fruitful. He worked relentlessly when the weather permitted, strating fourteen canvases before February, an approximate average of one painting per day during the first two weeks of his stay at Antibes. By the time Monet left the Côte d'Azur for Giverny, he had completed exactly thirty-nine paintings.
This strategy of producing series of paintings with similar motifs appealed to Monet and enabled him to explore a wide range of chromatic effects, and aided him in capturing the beauty of the Mediterranean scenery in its changing lights at different times of the day. It is important to note that the Antibes pictures paved the way for Monet's celebrated series pictures of the 1890s such as the haystacks, poplars, and the Rouen cathedral pictures.
On June 4, just over a month after his return from the Riviera, Monet sold ten of his Antibes canvases to Boussod, Valdon et Cie., Theo van Gogh's Paris gallery. Van Gogh paid Ff.11,900 for the group, and agreed to share with him fifty percent of their retail mark-up. The pictures were hung immediately in two small, understated rooms at the gallery's 19 Boulevard Montmartre gallery, and remained on view throughout July. Whereas Monet's Bordighera series had attracted little attention upon its initial exhibition, the Antibes pictures received an overwhelmingly positive response from critics, artists, and collectors alike. As Berthe Morisot commented, "You have made quite a conquest of this supposedly recalcitrant public" (quoted in D. Wildenstein, Monet or the triumph of Impressionism, Cologne, 1996, p. 243).
Prominent among Monet's supporters was the crtic Gustave Geffroy, who wrote in a review of the Boussod, Valadon et Cie., exhibition, published in La Justice, that Monet's views of Antibes captured "all that was characteristic about the area and all the deliciousness of the season...the strength of the vegetation... the neat delineations of the mountains, the static movement of the Mediterranean Sea, the beautiful and bright light, the sweetness of the air" (quoted in J. House, Monet: Nature into art, New Haven, 1986, p. 133).
Claude Monet left for the South of France on 14 January 1888, just over four years after his first trip to the Riviera with Renoir in late December 1883. Whilst with Renoir, Monet explored the Mediterranean coast, where he discovered Antibes, a walled city on the Côte d'Azur, midway between Nice and Cannes, which he described as a "small fortified town, bathed to a golden crust by the sun" (quoted in J. Pissarro, Monet and the Mediterranean, exh. cat., Fort Worth, 1997, p. 42).
On the recommendation of Guy de Maupassant, Monet had arranged to stay at the Château de la Pinède, a small pension which was popular with artists, and spent his first few days exploring Antibes and its surrounding area, hiking more than fifteen miles between Monaco and Nice. By the 19th of January, he had located "five or six superb motifs", and wrote to Alice, "The weather is so admirable that it would be a crime no to set to work right away" (Ibid, p. 42).
Indeed, the Antibes landscape was a source of both inspiration and frustration for Monet. He was enthralled by the brilliant light of the Côte d'Azur. In letters to Alice, he described the southern sun as "resplendent and eternal" and wrote "what I will bring back from here will be pure, gentle sweetness: some white, some pink, and some blue, and all this surrounded by the fairytale-like air" (Iibid, p. 42).
However, the more beautiful the landscape appeared to Monet, the more difficult it was for him to capture it on canvas. In a letter to Auguste Rodin dated from early February, he likened the act of painting at Antibes to "wrestling" with the sun: "I am working from morning to evening, brimming with energy.. I'm fencing and wrestling with the sun. And what a sun it is. In order to paint here, one would need gold and precious stones. It is quite remarkable" (quoted in R. Gordon and A. Forge, Monet, New York, 1983, p. 123). In a similar vein, he further explained to Alice, "It is so bright, so pure with this pink and blue, that the slightest touch of paint that is not right looks like a stain of dirt". To Geffroy he continues, "I am digging and I am plagued by every devil. I am very worried about what I am doing. It is so beautiful here, so bright, so luminous. One swims in blue air, and it is frightening..." (quoted in J. Pissarro, Monet and the Mediterranean, exh. cat., Fort Worth, 1997, p. 44 and 120).
The climatic extremes which Monet encountered at Antibes also proved difficult. The sun was so strong at certain times that Monet suffered from eyestrain and fatigue. Gusting winds on other days forced him to chain his easel to the ground, while a ten day period of rain in mid-February obliged him to halt work altogether. Moreover, the ever-changing weather and the passage of the season created a flux of scenery which complicated the process of landscape painting. "Everything grows, everything changes before your eyes" Monet complained (Ibid, p. 45).
But despite, the challenges which Antibes presented, the artist's sojourn there was extraordinarly fruitful. He worked relentlessly when the weather permitted, strating fourteen canvases before February, an approximate average of one painting per day during the first two weeks of his stay at Antibes. By the time Monet left the Côte d'Azur for Giverny, he had completed exactly thirty-nine paintings.
This strategy of producing series of paintings with similar motifs appealed to Monet and enabled him to explore a wide range of chromatic effects, and aided him in capturing the beauty of the Mediterranean scenery in its changing lights at different times of the day. It is important to note that the Antibes pictures paved the way for Monet's celebrated series pictures of the 1890s such as the haystacks, poplars, and the Rouen cathedral pictures.
On June 4, just over a month after his return from the Riviera, Monet sold ten of his Antibes canvases to Boussod, Valdon et Cie., Theo van Gogh's Paris gallery. Van Gogh paid Ff.11,900 for the group, and agreed to share with him fifty percent of their retail mark-up. The pictures were hung immediately in two small, understated rooms at the gallery's 19 Boulevard Montmartre gallery, and remained on view throughout July. Whereas Monet's Bordighera series had attracted little attention upon its initial exhibition, the Antibes pictures received an overwhelmingly positive response from critics, artists, and collectors alike. As Berthe Morisot commented, "You have made quite a conquest of this supposedly recalcitrant public" (quoted in D. Wildenstein, Monet or the triumph of Impressionism, Cologne, 1996, p. 243).
Prominent among Monet's supporters was the crtic Gustave Geffroy, who wrote in a review of the Boussod, Valadon et Cie., exhibition, published in La Justice, that Monet's views of Antibes captured "all that was characteristic about the area and all the deliciousness of the season...the strength of the vegetation... the neat delineations of the mountains, the static movement of the Mediterranean Sea, the beautiful and bright light, the sweetness of the air" (quoted in J. House, Monet: Nature into art, New Haven, 1986, p. 133).