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拍品专文
Although he was born in Paris, Monet passed his youth with his family in the port city of Le Havre on the Channel coast. He later told friends that he had spent more time as a boy on the cliffs and by the sea than he did in the classroom. He acquired a local reputation as a skillful caricaturist. At the age of seventeen he met Eugne Boudin, the renowned painter of the Channel ports and beaches, and became his pupil.
Monet was well-situated in Le Havre to step into the currents of the progressive landscape painting of his day. The plein air painters were frequent boarders at the Saint-Simeon farm, a small rural inn outside nearby Honfleur, which became known as the "Barbizon of the North". There Monet met Diaz, Troyon, Corot and Daubigny, and made the acquaintance of his great friend of his youth, Frdric Bazille, whose promising career was tragically cut short by his death in 1870 during the Franco-Prussian War.
Whatever lessons he took from these artists, the sea was his most important teacher. The ever-changing weather and light, the shifting colors of the sea, land and sky led him to a lifelong fascination with the mutability of nature. His first successes, in the 1865 Salon in Paris, were two views of the Seine Estuary done near the lighthouse at Honfleur. Paul Mantz, reviewing at the Salon for the Gazette des Beaux-Arts, wrote:
...the taste for harmonious schemes of color in the play of analogous tones, the feeling for values, the striking point of view of the whole, a bold manner of seeing things and forcing the attention of the spectator, these are qualities which M. Monet already possesses in high degree... From now on we shall certainly be interested in following the efforts of this sincere marine-painter (Quoted in J. Rewald, The History of Impressionism, New York, 1973, p. 123).
The present pastel displays this same mastery in a more casual manner and on a more intimate scale. The land depicted in the distance is probably the elevated area around Villerville, a small fishing village situated between Honfleur and Trouville. Monet made many pastels during the early part of his career, and in exploiting the luminosity and freedom of this medium, he began to develop his extraordinary sense of color. Here he uses the pure tones of the pastel sticks, and in the sea especially he mixes them to create subtle silvery hues. He drew quickly and boldly to capture the fleeting effects of the light, wind and water, achieving a improvisatory spontaneity in execution that was not to fully emerge in his oil painting until the next decade.
Monet was well-situated in Le Havre to step into the currents of the progressive landscape painting of his day. The plein air painters were frequent boarders at the Saint-Simeon farm, a small rural inn outside nearby Honfleur, which became known as the "Barbizon of the North". There Monet met Diaz, Troyon, Corot and Daubigny, and made the acquaintance of his great friend of his youth, Frdric Bazille, whose promising career was tragically cut short by his death in 1870 during the Franco-Prussian War.
Whatever lessons he took from these artists, the sea was his most important teacher. The ever-changing weather and light, the shifting colors of the sea, land and sky led him to a lifelong fascination with the mutability of nature. His first successes, in the 1865 Salon in Paris, were two views of the Seine Estuary done near the lighthouse at Honfleur. Paul Mantz, reviewing at the Salon for the Gazette des Beaux-Arts, wrote:
...the taste for harmonious schemes of color in the play of analogous tones, the feeling for values, the striking point of view of the whole, a bold manner of seeing things and forcing the attention of the spectator, these are qualities which M. Monet already possesses in high degree... From now on we shall certainly be interested in following the efforts of this sincere marine-painter (Quoted in J. Rewald, The History of Impressionism, New York, 1973, p. 123).
The present pastel displays this same mastery in a more casual manner and on a more intimate scale. The land depicted in the distance is probably the elevated area around Villerville, a small fishing village situated between Honfleur and Trouville. Monet made many pastels during the early part of his career, and in exploiting the luminosity and freedom of this medium, he began to develop his extraordinary sense of color. Here he uses the pure tones of the pastel sticks, and in the sea especially he mixes them to create subtle silvery hues. He drew quickly and boldly to capture the fleeting effects of the light, wind and water, achieving a improvisatory spontaneity in execution that was not to fully emerge in his oil painting until the next decade.