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Lot Essay
Monet spent three years from 1878 living in Vétheuil, a small town of 600 inhabitants on the Seine 40 miles downriver from Paris. Its relative isolation--the nearest railway station was eight miles distant--gave Monet an opportunity to advance his art away from the increasing congestion of Argenteuil. His years in Vétheuil were to prove difficult but productive. There were persistent financial worries, and, in the late summer of 1879, his wife Camille died at the age of 32.
Monet had been joined in Vétheuil by Ernest Hoschedé, his wife Alice, and their children. This important early patron of the Impressionists had been declared bankrupt, and the two men sought solace in each other's company. However a realtionship formed between Monet and Alice, and Hoschedé left Alice--and Vétheuil-- in 1880. A decade later, on Hoschedé's death, Monet married Alice. Vétheuil marked a turning point in Monet's career. Over the course of the 1870s, he had come to be seen as the leader of the Impressionist avant-garde yet, in 1879, he failed to visit their group exhibition and, in the following year, declined to submit any of his own works. His straitened financial circumstances--exacerbated by the disastrous forced sale of Hoschedé's collection in 1878--prompted him instead to seek recognition at the official Salon in 1880, proposing two works for show. Only one was accepted.
Artistically, too, the Vétheuil years were a watershed. All urban, Parisian subjects were banished from his repertoire. Henceforth he focused on landscape and the natural world, leading to the groups of paintings of ice-breaks and views across the Seine that presage the 'series' works of the 1890s. The present Vétheuil, for instance, relates very closely in subject and format to paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (W. 605) and in the Nationalgalerie, Berlin (W.609) (Fig. 4).
In all three works Monet has set his easel on the left bank of the Seine, looking south-eastwards over the river towards Vétheuil. Beyond the small pleasure boat are two islands dense with lush vegetation, with the imposing tower of Notre-Dame emerging above a screen of trees. In the present work the village is partially hidden by the trees on the Ile Musard.
Several of these celebrated Vétheuil views of 1880 were sent on exhibition to Boston in the 1890s. Here, prompted by the St Botolph Club, many found Bostonian buyers and consequently remain in American collections. Aside from the fine example in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (previously in the William Church Osborn collection), other Vétheuil pictures are housed in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (W.603) and The Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington (W. 611). Only the Metropolitan picture is as vibrant.
The present picture is a particularly fine example from the series (only the Metropolitan picture is as vibrant): it is painted in saturated colours, has a great variety of brushstrokes and the light effect across the trees and water is quite brilliant. In this respect it stands above the majority of the other works where Monet has sought to capture a less dramatic light effect.
Discussing the reaction of the English public to these extraordinary plein-air paintings, Frank Rutter wrote in 1905, 'The effect was overwhelming. It was a revelation to London of a new world of colour. Never before, so it seemed to us--and it was true--had we seen nature painted in all the prismatic radiance of summer sunshine. These pictures sparkled, they scintillated with light, not with the "golden glow" of academic convention, but with dancing pin-points of myriad hues.'
Monet had been joined in Vétheuil by Ernest Hoschedé, his wife Alice, and their children. This important early patron of the Impressionists had been declared bankrupt, and the two men sought solace in each other's company. However a realtionship formed between Monet and Alice, and Hoschedé left Alice--and Vétheuil-- in 1880. A decade later, on Hoschedé's death, Monet married Alice. Vétheuil marked a turning point in Monet's career. Over the course of the 1870s, he had come to be seen as the leader of the Impressionist avant-garde yet, in 1879, he failed to visit their group exhibition and, in the following year, declined to submit any of his own works. His straitened financial circumstances--exacerbated by the disastrous forced sale of Hoschedé's collection in 1878--prompted him instead to seek recognition at the official Salon in 1880, proposing two works for show. Only one was accepted.
Artistically, too, the Vétheuil years were a watershed. All urban, Parisian subjects were banished from his repertoire. Henceforth he focused on landscape and the natural world, leading to the groups of paintings of ice-breaks and views across the Seine that presage the 'series' works of the 1890s. The present Vétheuil, for instance, relates very closely in subject and format to paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (W. 605) and in the Nationalgalerie, Berlin (W.609) (Fig. 4).
In all three works Monet has set his easel on the left bank of the Seine, looking south-eastwards over the river towards Vétheuil. Beyond the small pleasure boat are two islands dense with lush vegetation, with the imposing tower of Notre-Dame emerging above a screen of trees. In the present work the village is partially hidden by the trees on the Ile Musard.
Several of these celebrated Vétheuil views of 1880 were sent on exhibition to Boston in the 1890s. Here, prompted by the St Botolph Club, many found Bostonian buyers and consequently remain in American collections. Aside from the fine example in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (previously in the William Church Osborn collection), other Vétheuil pictures are housed in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (W.603) and The Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington (W. 611). Only the Metropolitan picture is as vibrant.
The present picture is a particularly fine example from the series (only the Metropolitan picture is as vibrant): it is painted in saturated colours, has a great variety of brushstrokes and the light effect across the trees and water is quite brilliant. In this respect it stands above the majority of the other works where Monet has sought to capture a less dramatic light effect.
Discussing the reaction of the English public to these extraordinary plein-air paintings, Frank Rutter wrote in 1905, 'The effect was overwhelming. It was a revelation to London of a new world of colour. Never before, so it seemed to us--and it was true--had we seen nature painted in all the prismatic radiance of summer sunshine. These pictures sparkled, they scintillated with light, not with the "golden glow" of academic convention, but with dancing pin-points of myriad hues.'