View of Vétheuil

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View of Vétheuil (Claude Monet)
View of Vétheuil
Claude Monet , 1880
Oil on canvas
60 × 100 cm
National Gallery, Berlin

View of Vétheuil , also view of Vétheuil ( French Vue de Vétheuil ), is a landscape painting created in 1880 by the French painter Claude Monet . The picture, painted in oil on canvas, is 60 cm high and 100 cm wide. The view shows a summer landscape in the Seine valleynear Vétheuil , a motif that the painter varied in numerous paintings. His stay in the city marked a personal and artistic turning point. The picture belongs to the collection of the National Gallery in Berlinsince 1896.

Image description

In the view of Vétheuil , Monet shows a summer river landscape. In the foreground on the right is a meadow reproduced in splashes of green and yellow. Behind it flows from the lower left corner to the right edge of the picture. While it appears on the right in long, blue and white brushstrokes, on the left the reflection of the sky and the vegetation on the opposite bank is depicted in short green, white and blue strokes. The vegetation is divided into a flat vegetation in lush green in the middle, behind it there is a sprawling blue-green bush from the middle to the left edge of the picture and finally a wide row of dark green "cypress-like poplars" that towers above everything. While the bushes tend to have a “foamy, wavy” brushstroke, the poplars are characterized by elongated vertical brushwork. The view of Vétheuil is partially obscured by this vegetation. Only the tower of the Notre-Dame church protrudes in the center of the picture . Other buildings of the place can be found on the left edge of the picture behind the bushes and in the right half of the painting along the river. Behind Vétheuil rise the rolling green hills of the Seine valley. Above everything there is a blue sky with dense, swirling white clouds, which Monet painted in "curves of larger radii". In the area of ​​the sky, the primed canvas is visible in several places, which emphasizes the spontaneous and sketchy execution of the picture.

  • Detailed view: Church tower in Vétheuil

  • Detail view: woman on the meadow

Despite the striking church tower in the center of the picture, the exact location of the painter cannot be precisely located. Presumably he painted the view of Vétheuil from the opposite bank in Moisson- Lavacourt. The row of trees with the bushes may belong to one of the islands in the river. On the meadow on this side of the river, near the river, sits a woman in a light-colored dress with an open yellow parasol. In her position, leaning forward slightly, she could be busy reading a book. To her right, a few brushstrokes may suggest a small child. In the left half of the picture, a rowing boat with two people can be seen on the river. All of the people depicted in the picture are not recognizable individuals, but rather staffage figures from a landscape picture . The painting is signed and dated lower right: "Claude Monet 1880"

Monet in Vétheuil

Monet lived from 1878 to 1881 in Vétheuil, a town on the Seine about 60 km west of Paris. For the painter, these years meant a time of upheaval in both private and artistic fields. When Monet left Argenteuil with his wife Camille and son Jean in early 1878 , he found himself in a very tense financial situation. He had significant rental debts and was unable to pay his bills. During this time, he found buyers for his work difficult and the works fetched comparatively low prices. His wife was also expecting their second child. He was occasionally supported by friends such as the painter Édouard Manet , the writer Emile Zola or the doctor Paul Gachet . In the spring of 1878 Monet lived temporarily in Paris, where their second son Michel was born in March . In September of that year Monet moved to Vétheuil and his family followed shortly afterwards. The family of Monet's friend Ernest Hoschedé also moved into the house rented there . Hoschedé, who had previously had to file for bankruptcy for his textile company, stayed in Vétheuil for only a few weeks and was soon living in Paris again. His wife Alice and the couple's six children continued to live with the Monets in Vétheuil. Camille Monet's health had not recovered after her pregnancy; a little later she was diagnosed with abdominal cancer. She finally died in the fall of 1879 at the age of 32. Alice Hoschedé took care of her, who also looked after the eight children in the house. Claude Monet and Alice Hoschedé lived together as a couple for the next few years and later married.

During his time in Vétheuil, Monet painted numerous landscapes, often including motifs with views of the Seine. In some cases, he showed the river landscape without any direct reference to the location, such as in winter motifs such as the Ice Book from 1879 ( University of Michigan Museum of Art , Ann Arbor) or the summer view of the Seine river near Vétheuil from 1880 ( National Gallery of Art , Washington DC) . In these pictures neither buildings of the place nor people can be seen. Occasionally, Monet directed his gaze from Vétheuil to the opposite bank of the river, for example in the painting Lavacourt from 1880 ( Dallas Museum of Art ). Often, however, he showed the view from the opposite direction. In a series of views, Monet's view goes from the banks of the Seine in Lavacourt across the river to Vétheuil with the striking church. Examples are Vétheuil from 1879 ( National Gallery of Victoria , Melbourne) and Vétheuil in the winter of 1879 ( Frick Collection , New York City). In the Berlin view of Vétheuil there is also space for a meadow in the foreground. This picture element can be found in a similar variation in the picture Mohnfeld bei Vétheuil from 1879 ( Foundation EG Bührle Collection , Zurich). In this view, the meadow with its lush poppy flowers takes up significantly more of the picture area and the river only appears as a narrow strip in the middle distance. Other views of Vétheuil created by Monet in the summer of 1880 are the paintings Vétheuil im Sommer ( Metropolitan Museum of Art , New York City) and Vétheuil (private collection), which, apart from the lack of a meadow in the foreground, have great motifs similar to the Berlin Vétheuil - Have a view and were created in close proximity.

  • Claude Monet:
    Banks of the Seine at Vétheuil , 1880, National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

  • Claude Monet:
    Icefall , 1880, University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor

  • Claude Monet:
    Lavacourt , 1880, Dallas Museum of Art

  • Claude Monet:
    Vétheuil , 1879, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne

  • Claude Monet:
    Vétheuil in Winter , 1879, Frick Collection, New York City

  • Claude Monet:
    Field of poppies near Vétheuil , 1879, Foundation EG Bührle Collection, Zurich

  • Claude Monet:
    Vétheuil in the Summer , 1880, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City

  • Claude Monet:
    Vétheuil , 1880, private collection

In Vétheuil, Monet developed his painting style further. He usually applied the color with small lines, showed a “lively” brushwork and developed “a new pastel-like color scheme”. In addition, he broke away from his painter friends and did not take part in the group exhibition of the Impressionists in 1880. Instead, he again sent works to the traditional annual Salon de Paris , where the Lavacourt motif from 1880 ( Dallas Museum of Art ) was accepted by the jury. In addition, Monet had his first solo exhibition in June 1880 in the rooms of the magazine La Vie moderne . Both exhibitions brought Monet the attention he wanted and slowly his financial situation began to improve.

reception

Director Hugo von Tschudi justified the inclusion of the painting View of Vétheuil in the collection of the Berlin National Gallery in 1896 as follows: “Claude Monet means a further development in the field of landscape painting. In the pursuit of a concise grasp of the impression of nature, the means of reproduction are simplified and their intensity increased. The view of Vétheuil is a particularly instructive example of this direction. ”The art historian Julius Meier-Graefe praised the quality of the picture in 1898:“ It is a delicate Monet, but with its almost roccoco-like delicacy of line and color, it is irresistible of all pictures of the master ”. Meier-Graefe compared the view of Vétheuil with works by the English painter William Turner and favored Monet's more color-intensive execution: “Champagne foams in the tingling, robust sweetness of the color. Turner is sugar water ”. For the art critic Karl Scheffler , Monet's view of Vétheuil in 1912 was "a true marvel of modern, independent landscape painting". He went on to describe the work: “In this gorgeous picture everything is in motion. Air, light, sun and noon glimmer. The clouds move, the river flows, the trees sway, the air trembles in the heat. Everything is unstoppable. "

Provenance

Claude Monet sold the painting View of Vétheuil, probably in 1881, to the art dealer Paul Durand-Ruel . He kept the picture in his holdings until November 1896, when Hugo von Tschudi acquired it in his first year of service for the National Gallery in Berlin. The Berlin banker Karl von der Heydt donated the purchase price of 5,000 marks . It was the second purchase of a Monet painting for a German museum after the Hamburger Kunsthalle had acquired the still life of pears and grapes a few months earlier .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The painting is referred to by the National Gallery in Berlin as a view of Vétheuil , see, for example, Angelika Wesenberg: Painting art in the 19th century: the collection of the National Gallery . Vol. 2, L-Z, p. 628.
  2. ↑ The German title Blick auf Vétheuil can be found in Daniel Wildenstein: Monet, Catalog raisonné - Werkverzeichnis , Vol. 2, p. 234.
  3. ↑ The French title Vue de Vétheuil is given in Daniel Wildenstein: Monet, Catalog raisonné - Werkverzeichnis , Vol. 2, p. 234.
  4. ↑ Julius Meier-Graefe: History of the Development of Modern Art , Vol. 2, p. 429.
  5. ↑ Julius Meier-Graefe: History of the Development of Modern Art , Vol. 2, p. 429.
  6. ↑ Julius Meier-Graefe: History of the Development of Modern Art , Vol. 2, p. 429.
  7. ↑ Julius Meier-Graefe: History of the Development of Modern Art , Vol. 2, p. 429.
  8. ^ Daniel Wildenstein: Monet, Catalog raisonné - catalog raisonné , vol. 2, p. 234.
  9. ↑ John Rewald: The History of Impressionism. , P. 243.
  10. ↑ John Rewald: The History of Impressionism. , Pp. 244-245.
  11. ↑ John Rewald: The History of Impressionism. , P. 250.
  12. ↑ Angelika Wesenberg: Painting in the 19th century: the collection of the National Gallery . Vol. 2, L-Z, p. 628.
  13. ↑ Berlin State Museums of Prussian Cultural Heritage, Central Archives, Gen. 37, Vol. V. 1288/96 and 1362/96. Quotation reproduced in Angelika Wesenberg: View of Vétheuil in Johann Georg Prinz von Hohenzollern, Peter-Klaus Schuster: Manet bis van Gogh, Hugo von Tschudi and the struggle for modernity , p. 100.
  14. ↑ Quotation from Julius Meier-Graefe: The new National Gallery in the Future , 22nd year, 1898, issue 26, p. 592 reproduced in Angelika Wesenberg: View of Vétheuil in Johann Georg Prinz von Hohenzollern, Peter-Klaus Schuster: Manet bis van Gogh, Hugo von Tschudi and the struggle for modernity , p. 628.
  15. ↑ Julius Meier-Graefe: History of the Development of Modern Art , Volume II, p. 434
  16. ^ Karl Scheffler: The National Gallery in Berlin, a critical leader , p. 241.
  17. ^ Karl Scheffler: The National Gallery in Berlin, a critical leader , p. 241.
  18. ^ Daniel Wildenstein: Monet, Catalog raisonné - catalog raisonné , vol. 2, p. 234.
  19. ^ Daniel Wildenstein: Monet, Catalog raisonné - catalog raisonné , vol. 2, p. 234.
  20. ↑ Josef Kern: Impressionism in Wilhelmine Germany, Studies on the Art and Cultural History of the Empire , p. 180.
  21. ↑ Angelika Wesenberg: View of Vétheuil in Johann Georg Prinz von Hohenzollern, Peter-Klaus Schuster: Manet bis van Gogh, Hugo von Tschudi and the struggle for modernity , p. 100.
  22. ↑ Giesela Hopp: Tschuds work from the perspective of Alfred Lichtwark in Johann Georg Prinz von Hohenzollern, Peter-Klaus Schuster: Manet bis van Gogh, Hugo von Tschudi and the fight for modernity , p. 274.