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拍品专文
Painted in 1885, Printemps, saules emerged during an important moment in Claude Monet’s artistic career, as he sought to champion the aesthetic potentials of Impressionism at a time when the movement faced new challenges. Following his return from an artistic campaign on the Italian Riviera in the spring of 1884, Monet devoted much of the following years to painting en plein air in the countryside around his home at Giverny. This period produced an astonishingly rich and varied group of images that record the environmental abundance that he encountered. Celebrating the beauty of ephemeral light and changing atmosphere, each of these compositions demonstrates Monet’s unwavering commitment to the techniques and tenets of Impressionism. Filled with energetic brushwork and opulent colour, Printemps, saules showcases the artist’s prowess as he plays with staccato brushwork and rich impasto to give image to the springtime world.
In the spring of 1883, Monet and his family moved to Giverny. Located around forty miles from Paris, at the confluence of the Seine and Epte rivers, Giverny was a small farming community of just three hundred inhabitants, a countryside idyll untouched by the encroachment of modernisation that had already altered so much of France’s countryside. It was there that Monet found the serenity he had been searching for, renting a pink stucco house called Le Pressoir; the property boasted a kitchen garden and orchard as well as a barn that he soon converted into a studio. Monet was immediately enchanted by the landscapes surrounding Giverny. ‘Once settled, I hope to produce masterpieces,’ he wrote to Durand-Ruel within days of his arrival, ‘because I like the countryside very much’ (Monet, quoted in Monet’s Years at Giverny: Beyond Impressionism, exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1978, pp. 15-16). During his first years at Giverny, Monet diligently explored the surrounding terrain, setting out each morning with his paints and canvases, wandering through valleys and meadows, along streams and over hills, in an endless search for new inspiration.
The present work was painted alongside three other canvases which depict subtle variations of the same scene. Printemps, saules depicts two willow trees along the banks of the Epte. Mauve tonalities fill the canvas, embodying the first pinkish hues of spring. Silver and lavender brushwork form lacelike planes through which the hills behind are visible. The grasses are thick and verdant, their rich greenery reflected in the water beneath, and the river itself is a dynamic interplay of cobalt, navy, and flecks of shimmering white. Formally, Printemps, saules is a stark departure from traditional landscape painting. In classical formats, as developed by Annibale Carraci, Nicolas Poussin, and others, the depiction of a receding depth is key to the experience of looking. Linear perspective, a central development of the Renaissance, was used to organise an image to create the illusion of three-dimensional space across the flat picture plane, but Monet’s Printemps, saules is not structured as such. Instead, depth is achieved through lattices created by the willow branches, which simultaneously reveal and obscure the land behind.
With its delicate rendering of the fleeting effects of light, Printemps, saules clearly asserts Impressionism’s continued significance at a time when many of the movement’s members were abandoning the cause. The arrival of Pointillism, as pioneered in the mid-1880s by Georges Seurat and Paul Signac, heralded a new avant-garde idiom and posed a direct challenge to the aims and techniques of the Impressionists. While many swooned at the radical new style, Monet remained staunchly committed to Impressionism, declaring: ‘I am still an Impressionist and will always remain one’ (quoted in P. Tucker, Claude Monet: Life and Art, New Haven, 1995, p. 127). He continued to observe atmospheric shifts in his compositions, painting en plein air directly in front of his chosen motif, and using the gestural brushwork that had defined his earlier canvases.
Paintings such as Printemps, saules present a specific vision of France, rooted to the long-held belief that the country’s landscape was a point of national pride, a conviction that had only gained strength following France’s losses in the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-1871. Indeed, the diaphanous colours of Printemps, saules suggest a new optimism while at the same time revelling in the country’s environmental heritage. To further emphasise this, Monet’s scene is devoid of any sign of human life. The riverbank is an untouched arcadia, blossoming with spring’s new buds. As Paul Hayes Tucker has observed, this quality of Monet’s paintings ‘implied that the countryside was a place where one could find reassurances about the world, where contemporary problems seemed to vanish, and a deeper union with nature appeared possible’ (Tucker, in Monet in the 90s: The Series Paintings, exh. cat., Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1989, p. 111).
In the spring of 1883, Monet and his family moved to Giverny. Located around forty miles from Paris, at the confluence of the Seine and Epte rivers, Giverny was a small farming community of just three hundred inhabitants, a countryside idyll untouched by the encroachment of modernisation that had already altered so much of France’s countryside. It was there that Monet found the serenity he had been searching for, renting a pink stucco house called Le Pressoir; the property boasted a kitchen garden and orchard as well as a barn that he soon converted into a studio. Monet was immediately enchanted by the landscapes surrounding Giverny. ‘Once settled, I hope to produce masterpieces,’ he wrote to Durand-Ruel within days of his arrival, ‘because I like the countryside very much’ (Monet, quoted in Monet’s Years at Giverny: Beyond Impressionism, exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1978, pp. 15-16). During his first years at Giverny, Monet diligently explored the surrounding terrain, setting out each morning with his paints and canvases, wandering through valleys and meadows, along streams and over hills, in an endless search for new inspiration.
The present work was painted alongside three other canvases which depict subtle variations of the same scene. Printemps, saules depicts two willow trees along the banks of the Epte. Mauve tonalities fill the canvas, embodying the first pinkish hues of spring. Silver and lavender brushwork form lacelike planes through which the hills behind are visible. The grasses are thick and verdant, their rich greenery reflected in the water beneath, and the river itself is a dynamic interplay of cobalt, navy, and flecks of shimmering white. Formally, Printemps, saules is a stark departure from traditional landscape painting. In classical formats, as developed by Annibale Carraci, Nicolas Poussin, and others, the depiction of a receding depth is key to the experience of looking. Linear perspective, a central development of the Renaissance, was used to organise an image to create the illusion of three-dimensional space across the flat picture plane, but Monet’s Printemps, saules is not structured as such. Instead, depth is achieved through lattices created by the willow branches, which simultaneously reveal and obscure the land behind.
With its delicate rendering of the fleeting effects of light, Printemps, saules clearly asserts Impressionism’s continued significance at a time when many of the movement’s members were abandoning the cause. The arrival of Pointillism, as pioneered in the mid-1880s by Georges Seurat and Paul Signac, heralded a new avant-garde idiom and posed a direct challenge to the aims and techniques of the Impressionists. While many swooned at the radical new style, Monet remained staunchly committed to Impressionism, declaring: ‘I am still an Impressionist and will always remain one’ (quoted in P. Tucker, Claude Monet: Life and Art, New Haven, 1995, p. 127). He continued to observe atmospheric shifts in his compositions, painting en plein air directly in front of his chosen motif, and using the gestural brushwork that had defined his earlier canvases.
Paintings such as Printemps, saules present a specific vision of France, rooted to the long-held belief that the country’s landscape was a point of national pride, a conviction that had only gained strength following France’s losses in the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-1871. Indeed, the diaphanous colours of Printemps, saules suggest a new optimism while at the same time revelling in the country’s environmental heritage. To further emphasise this, Monet’s scene is devoid of any sign of human life. The riverbank is an untouched arcadia, blossoming with spring’s new buds. As Paul Hayes Tucker has observed, this quality of Monet’s paintings ‘implied that the countryside was a place where one could find reassurances about the world, where contemporary problems seemed to vanish, and a deeper union with nature appeared possible’ (Tucker, in Monet in the 90s: The Series Paintings, exh. cat., Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1989, p. 111).