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Lot Essay
Oliviers et palmiers, vallée de Sasso belongs to the extraordinary Sasso Valley series Monet painted on his second trip to the Mediterranean in 1884. Monet made three major trips to the French and Italian Rivieras between 1883 and 1908. The first trip was made with his friend Pierre-Auguste Renoir in December 1883, whose knowledge of the region helped Monet to quickly familiarise himself with the local geography. The second trip quickly followed the first in January 1884 which he embarked on alone to tackle the challenges posed by the wild and exotic motifs presented by the exuberant aspects of the South. The olive and palm trees, which thickly vegetated the deep valleys and mountains of the south, provided the artist with the challenging new picturial motifs he sought. Before leaving for Bordighera on the Italian Riveria, Monet wrote to Paul Durand-Ruel, the first owner of this painting, announcing his plans to return to that site on the Italian Riviera that he referred to as 'one of the most beautiful places' he had seen.
Only about twelve miles east of the French town of Menton, the small village of Bordighera was Monet's residence for about ten weeks from January 17 or 18 until April 6, 1884. Oliviers et palmiers, vallée de Sasso is one of five canvases Monet painted in the Sasso Valley in Bordighera in 1884. Of the remaining four paintings from the Sasso series, Vallée de Sasso (W.861) hangs in the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Vallée de Sasso, effet de soleil (W.862) hangs in the Musée Marmottan, Paris, and La Vallée de Sasso, effet bleu (W.859) was sold in New York in 1997 for $1,432,500 and there remains one further painting in private hands Bordighera, vallée de Sasso (W.863).
The richly textured Sasso Valley canvases are packed with a complex interwoven pattern of exotic plants including citrus trees, lianas, palm trees which seem to engulf the small stone building present in all five works in this group. Joachim Pissarro, in his book conceived in conjunction with the exhibition Monet and the Mediterranean writes that these paintings have permited Monet to indulge in his 'unique debauchery of paint' and that 'it is most likely with such paintings in mind that he told his wife that he found nature even crazier than his art: the pictorial effect of his empathy with this wild segment of the landscape was that Monet could let go of all inhibitions. Monet would not find himself so liberated pictorially again until he started his Water Lilies series, in which he would immerse himself in a wholly natural environment and would allow the pictorial patterns of the paint surface to be dictated by the forms of the all-encompasing pond surface' (J. Pissarro, Monet and the Mediterranean, New York, 1997, p. 84).
Only about twelve miles east of the French town of Menton, the small village of Bordighera was Monet's residence for about ten weeks from January 17 or 18 until April 6, 1884. Oliviers et palmiers, vallée de Sasso is one of five canvases Monet painted in the Sasso Valley in Bordighera in 1884. Of the remaining four paintings from the Sasso series, Vallée de Sasso (W.861) hangs in the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Vallée de Sasso, effet de soleil (W.862) hangs in the Musée Marmottan, Paris, and La Vallée de Sasso, effet bleu (W.859) was sold in New York in 1997 for $1,432,500 and there remains one further painting in private hands Bordighera, vallée de Sasso (W.863).
The richly textured Sasso Valley canvases are packed with a complex interwoven pattern of exotic plants including citrus trees, lianas, palm trees which seem to engulf the small stone building present in all five works in this group. Joachim Pissarro, in his book conceived in conjunction with the exhibition Monet and the Mediterranean writes that these paintings have permited Monet to indulge in his 'unique debauchery of paint' and that 'it is most likely with such paintings in mind that he told his wife that he found nature even crazier than his art: the pictorial effect of his empathy with this wild segment of the landscape was that Monet could let go of all inhibitions. Monet would not find himself so liberated pictorially again until he started his Water Lilies series, in which he would immerse himself in a wholly natural environment and would allow the pictorial patterns of the paint surface to be dictated by the forms of the all-encompasing pond surface' (J. Pissarro, Monet and the Mediterranean, New York, 1997, p. 84).