Claude Monet | Autograph letter signed, to his wife Alice, on Norway in winter, 9 February 1895

Claude Monet

Autograph letter signed ("Claude"), to his wife Alice, 9 February 1895

describing the challenges he anticipates when painting en plein air during a Norwegian winter ("...Here the cold becomes extremely sharp. The minimum in Christiania is 10 below at noon and 25 to 30 at night, but in the places we travelled during these 4 to 5 days in the mountains we always had in the day between 20 and 30. It's to the great astonishment of the Norwegians to see me put up with this, and especially to see me in Norway in winter..." [trans]), extolling the hospitality of the people ("...where there is no village, there is now and then a chalet, it is a stopping place for horses and people. You are quite surprised to enter real salons, to be received there by civilized, amiable and gracious people, happy to offer you hospitality..." [trans]) and exceptional beauty of the natural environment, with family news and his plans for further painting excursions, 6 pages, 8vo (210 x 135mm.), integral blank, 9 February 1895, Kristiania (but on headed stationery of Giverny par Vernon Eure), red pen cross marks to the margins of 4 pages

"...What beautiful things to see there, from the top of these sheer mountains on huge lakes completely taken and covered with snow, we had in these places more than a meter and our sled slipped on it, the horse in sweat all covered in frost and ice like us. I also saw enormous waterfalls of hundred meters but completely frozen, it is extraordinary..." [trans]

The great impressionist Claude Monet (1840-1926) spent two months in Norway in the early months of 1895. He was visiting his eldest stepson, Jacques Hoschedé, who had married a Norwegian woman and lived in Kristiania (Oslo) but the play of northern light on the snow and ice of a Scandinavian winter provided Monet with an exceptional subject. This letter was written when he was making preparations to leave the city and begin painting: "I'm going to equip myself for that, because you have to be hermetically covered." In the weeks that followed he painted some 29 scenes whilst staying in an artists' colony in Skandiva west of Oslo, most notably the Mount Kolsaas series, a typical Monet series which depict the same view of a local hill under different light conditions.