Claude Monet

Michel Monet, Giverny (the artist's son)
Private Collection (acquired in Paris in the 1950s)
By descent from the above to the present owner

Basel, Kunsthalle, Impressionisten, 1949, no. 234

Daniel Wildenstein, Claude Monet, Catalogue raisonné, Lausanne, 1991, vol. V, no. D420, illustrated p. 124

Executed on an antique cream laid paper probably dating from the 18th or possibly 17th Century, not laid down and attached to the overmount in two places on the upper edge. The sheet is time-stained and some minor mottled foxing to the sky. There is a small repaired tear to the right part of the extreme lower edge (below the boat), one to the lower left corner and a further tiny repair to the left part of the extreme upper edge. Otherwise, this work is in overall good condition. Colours: overall fairly accurate in the printed catalogue, though the paper tone is slightly less pink in the original.
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One of several drawings of boats beside the sea completed while the artist was living on the Normandy coast in the late 1860s, the present work is a remarkable example of Monet’s experiments with the conventions of landscape. Whilst traditional landscape painting held a certain allure for Monet at this time, other more exotic influences drew his attention. The artist and his contemporaries were fascinated by Japanese art which profoundly affected their own artistic output. The inventive perspectives and clarity found in the works of Japanese artists, such as Hiroshige, provided French painters with new impetus to challenge the Salon-led style of the elder generation. The present work possesses a strong compositional rhythm and panoramic depth which nods to the complex asymmetry evident in Japanese woodcuts. The artist’s stark contrast of dark and light and his dynamic use of shading, particularly evident in the rock formation to the left of the sheet, represent his gradual development of ideas and attempts to evoke the atmosphere of the landscape.

The present work prefigures the composition and gravity of the artist’s defining Cliffs at Etretat series of the 1880s, with its low horizon and dark rock mass balanced by the encompassing sky. The striking effect of stillness and depth created by the balance of positive and negative space encapsulates this liminal moment in Monet’s career. Not quite embracing the full looseness that would define his mature oeuvre, yet definitely not mired in the Salon-inspired naturalism of his earliest work, this masterful drawing anticipates Monet’s future greatness.