Claude Monet

Michel Monet, Giverny

Sale: Sotheby Parke-Bernet, London, December 6, 1978, lot 230

Acquired at the above sale

Daniel Wildenstein, Monet, vie et oeuvre, vol. 3, Lausanne & Paris, 1979, illustrated p. 89

Daniel Wildenstein, Monet, Catalogue raisonné, vol. 3, Cologne, 1996, no. 1124, illustrated p. 425

This work is in excellent condition. Original canvas. Traces of the vertical stretcher visible, especially to the left of haystack in center of composition. Brushwork and impasto are intact. Under UV light, no inpainting is apparent. Slight buckling of canvas in the extreme corners.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

Champ à Giverny is an early depiction of the environs that would become synonymous with Monet's most innovative compositions. Monet moved with his family to Giverny in April 1883 and remained there for the rest of his life. By 1890, he had become financially successful enough to buy a house and a large garden, which provided the site for his legendary Nymphéas compositions at the turn of the century.

In the first years after settling in Giverny with his family, Monet spent many of his painting campaigns away from home, traveling to Italy and the south of France and later to Étretat in Normandy. "One always needs a certain amount of time to get familiar with a new landscape," Monet later explained, implying that his time away from Giverny allowed him to recalibrate his new objectives in landscape painting (quoted in Daniel Wildenstein, op. cit., 1996, vol. I, p. 192).

According to Daniel Wildenstein, author of the artist's catalogue raisonné, Monet completed two extant works from this vantage point that included the dynamic tree in the foreground and the haystack in the middle ground of the composition. The present work is the more finished of these two paintings. Wildenstein writes of the earlier version, "In 1887, for the first time, Monet did not leave Giverny to go and work elsewhere. This study, in which a grainstack occupies what is still a subsidiary place, is an intimation of the interest he would later show for this motive" (ibid., p. 425). Indeed the motif of haystacks in a quiet field would provide the subject for an important series of paintings in 1889. With this central element, Champ à Giverny provides a glimpse into the groundbreaking modernism of Monet's post-Impressionist masterworks.