Claude Monet

Claude Monet (1840-1926) Argenteuil, fin d'après-midi signed 'Claude Monet' (lower right) oil on canvas 23 5/8 x 32 in. (60 x 81.3 cm.) Painted in 1872 Galerie Durand-Ruel et Cie., Paris (acquired from the artist, 1872). Maurice Masson, Paris; sale, Hôtel Drouot, Paris, 22 June 1911, lot 22. Galerie Durand-Ruel et Cie. and Galerie Bernheim-Jeune et Cie., Paris (acquired at the above sale). Galerie Bernheim Jeune et Cie., Paris (acquired from the above). (possibly) Isidore Montaignac, Paris. Comtesse Joachim Murat (Thérèse Bianchi), Paris (1912). Marquis de Ludre-Frolois (Frédéric-Louis-Marie-René), Paris. Comte de Chaumont Quitry and Claude de Ludre-Frolois, Paris (by descent from the above). Wildenstein & Co., Inc., New York (acquired from the above, 1955). Mr. and Mrs. Bernard F. Combemale (née Pamela Woolworth), New York (1956); sale, Christie's, London, 27 November 1964, lot 42. Wildenstein & Co., Inc., New York (acquired at the above sale). Jack Ladson, New York (1964). Acquavella Galleries, New York. Lawrence Lever, New York; Estate sale, Christie's, New York, 15 May 1979, lot 12. Mr. and Mrs. Ralph C. Wilson, Jr., Michigan; sale, Christie's, New York, 14 November 1990, lot 13. Private collection, Switzerland (acquired at the above sale); sale, Sotheby's, London, 8 February 2011, lot 15. Acquired at the above sale by the present owner. PROPERTY OF AN ESTATE C. Mauclair, Claude Monet, London, 1927, p. 61 (illustrated, pl. 13; titled Argenteuil). D. Wildenstein, Claude Monet: Biographie et catalogue raisonné, Paris, 1974, vol. I, p. 210, no. 224 (illustrated, p. 211). D. Wildenstein, Claude Monet: Catalogue raisonné, Paris, 1991, vol. V, p. 26, no. 224. D. Wildenstein, Monet: Catalogue raisonné, Cologne, 1996, vol. II, pp. 99-100, no. 224 (illustrated in color, p. 99). R. Kendall, ed., Monet by Himself, London, 2004, p. 213, no. 52 (illustrated in color, pl. 52). Paris, Galerie Bernheim-Jeune et Cie., Collection Maurice Masson, 1911, p. 26, no. 22 (illustrated, p. 27; titled Argenteuil). New York, The Museum of Modern Art and Los Angeles County Museum, Claude Monet, Seasons and Moments, March-August 1960, p. 60, no. 12. New York, Wildenstein & Co., Inc., Olympia's Progeny, October-November 1965, no. 11 (illustrated). New York, Acquavella Galleries, Inc., Claude Monet, October-November 1976, no. 11 (illustrated in color). Hiroshima Prefectural Art Museum and Tokyo, The Bunkamura Museum of Art, Monet and Renoir: Two Great Impressionist Trends, November 2003-May 2004, p. 149, no. 1 (illustrated in color, p. 26). Brescia, Museo di Santa Giulia, Monet, la Senna, le ninfee: Il grande fiume e il nuovo secolo, October 2004-March 2005, p. 256, no. 57 (illustrated in color, p. 257; titled Argenteuil, tramonto). The landscapes that Monet painted at Argenteuil during the 1870s have been widely hailed as a high point--arguably, the high point--of Impressionism. Paul Tucker has described Monet's oeuvre from this period as "one of the most remarkable bodies of work in the history of art... and a touchstone for the development of Western visual culture" (The Impressionists at Argenteuil, exh. cat., National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 2000, p. 14). In January 1872, just weeks after Monet's arrival at Argenteuil, his friend and mentor Eugène Boudin wrote to a mutual acquaintance, the Paris dealer Pierre-Firmin Martin, "I have been seeing Monet frequently these days. He's settled in comfortably and seems to have a great desire to make a name for himself. I believe that he is destined to fill one of the most prominent positions in our school of painting" (quoted in P. Tucker, Claude Monet: Life and Art, New Haven, 1995, p. 53). Boudin's prediction proved spot-on. In the first two years that Monet spent at Argenteuil, leading up the watershed First Impressionist Exhibition in the spring of 1874, he consolidated the formal vocabulary of this revolutionary new manner of painting, producing a string of plein-air masterpieces that seem as fresh and vital today as they did when they were first made. As other progressive painters--Sisley, Renoir, Caillebotte, and Manet among them--joined Monet at Argenteuil, the town became the locus of the new painting, an alternative to Paris. Indeed, as John Rewald has noted, "Probably no single place could be identified more closely with Impressionism than Argenteuil" (The History of Impressionism, New York, 1973, 4th rev. ed., p. 341). When Monet moved to Argenteuil in December 1871 following the Franco-Prussian War, it was a burgeoning suburban enclave of around eight thousand inhabitants. Promoted in contemporary guidebooks as an agréable petite ville, the picturesque town was prominently situated on the right bank of the Seine eleven kilometers west of Paris, where the river loops again on its course to the English Channel. Two bridges, one for coach and pedestrian traffic and the other bearing the main train line between Paris and Rouen, connected Argenteuil to the smaller center of Petit Gennevilliers on the opposite bank. Just fifteen minutes from the capital by rail, Argenteuil had been a popular destination since the mid-1850s for middle-class Parisians who wanted to escape the capital for fresh-air holidays or Sunday outings. The town was particularly popular with recreational boaters, since the Seine is broader here than anywhere else in the environs of Paris (figs. 1-2). Monet was immediately attracted to the wealth of pictorial opportunities that Argenteuil afforded him, from the lively nautical traffic on the boat basin to the quaint village streets, from the tilled fields and vineyards to untouched corners of nature on the outskirts of town. In 1872 alone, he completed nearly sixty paintings, more than he had even attempted in the previous three years at Bougival, Trouville, London, and Holland combined, and he netted the extraordinary sum of 12,000 francs in sales, considerably more than the salary of a doctor or lawyer in Paris at the time. The present painting is the largest in an important group of four closely related canvases that Monet produced in the spring or summer of 1872, just months after his arrival in Argenteuil, which depict the view downstream from the town (Wildenstein, nos. 221-224; figs. 3-4). On the right are the stately chestnut trees that lend shade and grandeur to the riverbank here, and on the left is the Ile Marante, a slender island that divides the Seine into two branches immediately west of the Argenteuil boat basin. In the distance is a turreted, Louis XIII-style manor house that had been built the previous year by Emile Michelet, a wealthy Parisian banker and vice-president of the Cercle de la Voile de Paris, an elegant yachting club that had its moorings at Argenteuil. Flanking Michelet's house are a pair of smokestacks and several low factory buildings. In the other three paintings in the group, Monet included part of the sandy promenade that ran along the Argenteuil bank; in the present canvas, he has moved his easel slightly further west, where the sandy promenade becomes a well-worn, grassy path. The various canvases in the group were painted at different times of day and in different weather conditions, allowing Monet to experiment with a range of lighting effects. He depicts the scene in golden midday sunshine (fig. 3), in cooler light beneath a dramatic layer of clouds (fig. 4), or--in our painting--in the richly colored glow of late afternoon, the sky and the water streaked with pale orange and pink and the trees rustling in the very faintest breeze. That Monet turned his attention repeatedly to this particular site so soon after arriving in Argenteuil is not surprising, as it seems to exemplify everything one might want from suburban living. The natural and still unspoiled beauties of the town are amply in evidence in these tranquil scenes, with their placid waters, deserted riverbanks, and high, expansive skies. At the same time, the sailboats that drift gently on the surface of the Seine speak to the abundant opportunities for leisure that Argenteuil afforded, while the chimneys (shown here with no smoke, suggesting that the scene was painted on a Sunday) remind us that this site was distinctly modern. Tucker has written, "Of all the places he painted in Argenteuil, this was probably one of the most significant, as it seemed to embody everything positive that the town, and other suburbs like it, were supposed to possess--the ideal integration of the new and old, the natural and the human. This is a place where labor (in the form of the factory chimneys and small sheds on the right) happily co-exists with leisure (as represented by the sailboats on the river), where the presence of the human in the landscape in the form of the turreted house seems not only appropriate but desirable... Evocative and inviting, this is the suburban paradise that was sought after in the 1850s and 1860s but made all the more precious and desired after the disasters of 1870-1871. Its order was exactly what was needed in post-war France, its calm the restorative balm for the nation as a whole" (op. cit., 1995, p. 61). The carefully crafted composition of the present painting underscores this sense of consummate order and beauty. All the pieces of the picture fit together like the interlocking parts of an ideally constructed world. The banks of the river and the edges of the grassy path produce a series of receding orthogonals that leads the eye gently but insistently into the scene. Together, the wedges of water and earth form a narrow, elongated rectangle that provides a stable base for the nearly square expanse of sky, which rises majestically from the low horizon. The turret of the château and the two factory chimneys create a trio of verticals that ascend from left to right toward the towering trees, which in turn close the scene with subtle authority. The triangular reflections of the sailboat and the château stretch across the placid, glass-like waters almost to the riverbank in the foreground, knitting together near and far, while the entire scene is unified and enlivened by Monet's broken, vibrating brushstroke. Tucker has written, "This meticulously ordered scene...possesses the air of contented discovery and seems to be the product of a focused individual in tune with the world around him. It is in many ways a picture of perfection. There is nothing extraneous in this painting, nothing that disrupts the flow of one area to the next, nothing that seems out of position... The composition could not be set down with more rigor or sensitivity" (op. cit., 2000, p. 60). Around the same time that he painted the present picture, Monet also turned and looked along the length of the promenade in the opposite direction, producing a single canvas that captures the view upstream toward the highway bridge at Argenteuil (Wildenstein, no. 225; fig. 5). Whereas the present painting retains a palpable sense of the rural calm that characterized old Argenteuil, the view toward the highway bridge provides a veritable inventory of the pleasures that the modern suburban landscape offered to vacationers, from strolling on the promenade or lounging on the grassy banks to sailing, rowing, and bathing on the Seine itself. Compositionally, the painting is a mirror-image of the present scene, the high rectangle of sky now scudded with bright noontime clouds rather than streaked with the gentle pinks of late afternoon. As in the present painting, the low vantage point invites the viewer to walk into the scene, making everything appear easily accessible, just as the rich impasto produces a sense of the tangible and immediate. Tucker has written, "One moves effortlessly through the picture; the descending line of trees and the converging promenade and riverbank invite one in, while the graciously paced series of horizontal elements lure one gently left and right... From these kinds of perfectly negotiated relationships, it seems that Monet had found an ideal place to live and work" (op. cit., 1995, p. 62). Over the course of the next three years, Monet drew seemingly limitless inspiration from his surroundings at Argenteuil, exhaustively documenting the public spaces and pleasure-seekers of the riverside town. Between 1872 and 1875, he painted more than fifty views of this stretch of the Seine, focusing in particular on three motifs: the boat rental area immediately downstream from the road bridge; the wide basin of the river, with its sandy promenades; and the idyllic Petit Bras encircling the Ile Marante. In three paintings dated 1875, he reprised the composition of the present painting, depicting roughly the same stretch of the river but from the opposite bank, at Petit Gennevilliers (Wildenstein, nos. 373-375; fig. 6); in another pair of paintings, he stood slightly further downstream, looking directly across the Seine toward the Château Michelet and the adjacent factory buildings (Wildenstein, nos. 327-328; fig. 7). Although they range in mood from secluded to worldly, reflective to high-spirited, these views all offered Monet the opportunity to paint essentially the same subject: "a well-ordered suburb where nature and humans met in agreeable harmonies," to quote Robert Herbert (Impressionism: Art, Leisure, and Parisian Society, New Haven, 1988, p. 234). By early 1876, however, Argenteuil's appeal for Monet had begun to fade. In the four years since he had arrived there, the town had undergone enormous changes, becoming more populous and aggressively modern. A third iron works was set to open across the street from Monet's house, and plans were being made to bring a second railroad through town to accommodate the increased commuter and commercial traffic. Disheartened by these developments, Monet chose to spend much of 1876 away from Argenteuil. He undertook a brief campaign in Paris during the spring and early summer, painting the timeless, tranquil gardens of the Tuileries and Parc Monceau, and then retreated to Ernest Hoschedé's country house at idyllic Montgeron from July until December. In January 1877, he returned to Paris and made a complete about-face, tackling one of the most radically modern, urban subjects of his career: the crowded, steaming Gare Saint-Lazare. Finally, three months later, he made his way back to Argenteuil, where he virtually stopped painting for the remainder of the year, seemingly unable to reconcile the contradictions that increasingly characterized the burgeoning town. Between April 1877 and January 1878, when he left Argenteuil permanently for rural Vétheuil, Monet produced just four depictions of the town--all of them painted from roughly the same spot and depicting the very same view as the present scene (Wildenstein, nos. 450-453; fig. 8). Tucker has explained, "When he finally took up his paints and brushes again he returned to the one place that had embodied all of the idyllic qualities of the town when he had first arrived--the promenade" (op. cit., 1995, p. 100). These parting views of Argenteuil, however, differ dramatically from the ones that Monet had painted at the very beginning of his stay. There is no longer an entrance to the scene, an invitation to stroll along the once-welcoming bank; instead, the foreground is completely blocked by a dense thicket of foliage. Indeed, the scene appears forcefully split in half, the agitated mass of bold, dark flowers in the foreground contrasting with the blurry forms and golden hues of the background. No longer is there a logical delineation of spaces, a sense of each part in the painting being integrated with the next; instead, we see the junction of two separate worlds, no longer reconcilable. Tucker has concluded, "Just as the flowers that touch the background have lost their petals, so too had Monet lost his faith in the myth of progress... The idyll of the other views along the promenade has now become a clash of opposites" (ibid., p. 100; Monet at Argenteuil, New Haven, 1982, p. 183). In the present painting, however, all is peaceful and harmonious, a summer idyll, a veritable poem of tranquility--albeit painted in a vigorous and distinctively modern manner, the vibrating tissue of broken brushstrokes and the heightened palette of the late afternoon sky far removed from Barbizon norms. Recognizing its beauty and sensitivity, the dealer Durand-Ruel snapped up the canvas from Monet almost before the paint had dried; it was later purchased by the Parisian collector Maurice Masson and was featured in an exhibition of his Impressionist holdings at the Galerie Bernheim-Jeune in 1911. Claude Monet, 1877. BARCODE: 28855286 (fig. 1) The Seine at Argenteuil, late nineteenth century. Viewed from the Petit Gennevilliers promenade looking upstream. BARCODE: 28855309 (fig. 2) The Château Michelet at Argenteuil, late nineteenth century. BARCODE: 28855293 (fig. 3) Claude Monet, La promenade d'Argenteuil, 1872. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. BARCODE: 28855156 (fig. 4) Claude Monet, La promenade d'Argenteuil, 1872. Sold, Christie's, London, 24 June 1998, lot 18. BARCODE: 28855170 (fig. 5) Claude Monet, Le Bassin d'Argenteuil, 1872. Musée d'Orsay, Paris. BARCODE: 28855149 (fig. 6) Claude Monet, La Seine à Argenteuil, 1875. Sold, Christie's, New York, 14 May 1997, lot 20. BARCODE: 28855163 (fig. 7) Claude Monet, Coucher de soleil sur la Seine, 1874. Philadelphia Museum of Art. BARCODE: 28855132 (fig. 8) Claude Monet, La Seine à Argenteuil, 1877. Sold, Christie's, New York, 3 November 2004, lot 30. BARCODE: 28855187

Lot Description Claude Monet (1840-1926) Sainte-Adresse, la Pointe de la Hève signé 'Claude Monet' (en bas à gauche) pastel sur papier bleu 18.5 x 25.5 cm. (7¼ x 10 in.) Exécuté vers 1864-65 Provenance Emile Billard, Le Havre, avant 1930. Puis par descendance au propriétaire actuel. Literature D. Wildenstein, Claude Monet, catalogue raisonné, Lausanne, 1991, vol. V, p. 157, no. P9 (illustré). Post-Lot Text 'Sainte-Adresse, la Pointe de la Hève'; signed lower left; pastel on blue paper; executed circa 1864-65. View Lot Notes › Bien que né à Paris, Claude Monet passe la majeure partie de son enfance et de son adolescence au Havre où sa famille s'installe en 1845. Le port, la plage de Sainte-Adresse jusqu'à la pointe de la Hève, ont fourni à l'artiste le thème de ses premières oeuvres. Il leur consacre d'ailleurs bien plus de temps qu'à l'enseignement : "j'étais un indiscipliné de naissance, on n'a jamais pu me plier, même dans ma petite enfance, à une règle [...] Le collège m'a toujours fait l'effet d'une prison et je n'ai jamais pu me résoudre à y vivre même quatre heures par jour" (l'artiste cité in S. Patin, Monet, Italie, 1991, p. 14). Vers 1856-1858, Monet connaît ses premiers succès grâce à des caricatures. Ces oeuvres, qu'il signe O. Monet (d'après Oscar, son premier prénom) sont vendues chez un papetier-encadreur et marchand de couleurs où elles côtoient les tableaux d'Eugène Boudin. C'est ainsi qu'il fait la connaissance du peintre de marine, de 6 ans son aîné. Celui-ci est encore gauche et presque inconnu du public mais fort d'une expérience que n'a pas Monet. Il incite ce dernier à faire de la peinture et à travailler le paysage d'après nature. Claude Monet confiera à Gérard Jean-Aubry au sujet de cet enseignement "Ce fut tout à coup comme un voile qui se déchire : j'avais compris, j'avais saisi ce que pouvait être la peinture; [...] ma destinée de peintre s'était ouverte. Si je suis devenu un peintre, c'est à Eugène Boudin que je le dois" (Ibid., p. 15). Les peintres de plein-air sont nombreux à fréquenter les environs ainsi que la ferme Saint-Siméon, une petite auberge de campagne non loin d'Honfleur qui reçut d'ailleurs le surnom de "Barbizon normand". Monet y fait la rencontre de Diaz, Troyon, Corot, Daubigny, ainsi que de celui qui deviendra son grand ami, Frédéric Bazille. Cependant, quelles que soient les leçons qu'il retient de ces artistes, c'est de la mer qu'il reçoit son plus précieux enseignement. A partir de l'observation des variations atmosphériques, des couleurs de la mer, de la terre et du ciel, évoluant au gré des heures de la journée, Monet s'efforce d'atteindre une parfaite maîtrise de sa perception comme de ses moyens d'expression. Sainte-Adresse, la pointe de la Hève témoigne de cette maîtrise de l'artiste, dans un style toutefois plus libre, plus spontané, et à une échelle plus intimiste que ne le permettait la technique de la peinture à l'huile. Ici, l'artiste utilise des tons purs qu'il superpose : les nuances de vert définissent les falaises tandis que les gris et bleus clairs décrivent des rouleaux de mer ourlés d'un blanc qui dépeint l'écume formée à leur surface. Au salon de 1865, année vers laquelle il exécuta fort probablement notre pastel, Monet reçoit les premiers honneurs du public. Ainsi, Paul Mantz, critique pour la Gazette des Beaux-Arts écrit : "Le goût des colorations harmonieuses dans le jeu des tons analogues, le sentiment des valeurs, l'aspect saisissant de l'ensemble, une manière hardie de voir les choses et de s'imposer à l'attention du spectateur, ce sont là des qualités que M. Monet possède déjà à un haut degré [...] Nous voilà intéressés désormais à suivre dans ses futures tentatives ce mariniste sincère." (P. Mantz cité in J. Rewald, Histoire de l'impressionnisme, New York, 1973, 123). Although he was born in Paris, Claude Monet spent most of his childhood and adolescence in Le Havre, where his family moved in 1845. The port and the beach at Sainte- Adresse stretching to the Pointe de la Hève provided the artist with the themes for his first works. In fact he spent much more time on them than he did school: "I was innately undisciplined, no-one could bend me to their rules even when I was very young [...] School always felt like a prison and I could never resign myself to staying there even for four hours a day" (the artist quoted in S. Patin, Monet, Italy, 1991, p. 14). Monet experienced his first success around 1856-1858 through his caricatures. These works, which he signed O. Monet (his first name being Oscar) were sold at an art materials shop where they sat alongside paintings by Eugène Boudin. This is how he met the seascape painter, who was six years his senior. Boudin was still somewhat unrefied and almost unknown to the public, but had experience which Monet lacked. He encouraged Monet to paint and work on landscapes from life. Monet described this mentoring to Gérard Jean-Aubry: "It was suddenly as if a veil had been pulled aside. I understood what it was to paint; [...] my destiny as a painter was revealed. I owe the fact that I became a painter to Eugène Boudin" (Ibid., p. 15). Numerous open-air painters frequented the area and the farm at Saint-Siméon, a small country inn not far from Honfleur which was nicknamed the "Norman Barbizon". This is where Monet met Diaz, Troyon, Corot and Daubigny, as well as Frédéric Bazille, who would become a firm friend. Whatever lessons he learned from these artists, however, his most valuable education came from the sea. Based on his observation of atmospheric changes, the colours of the sea, the land and the sky, evolving over the course of the day, Monet strived to achieve a perfect mastery of his perception and his means of expression. Sainte-Adresse, la pointe de la Hève is testament to the artist's dexterity, whilst also demonstrating the freer, more spontaneous style and more intimate scale compared to when working in oil. Here the artist uses pure tones which he superimposes: shades of green define the cliffs, while greys and light blues define the rolling clouds, reflected in the surface of the waters beneath. At the exhibition of 1865, very likely the year in which he produced our pastel, Monet received his first public recognition. Paul Mantz, the critic from the Gazette des Beaux-Arts wrote: "The taste for harmonious colors within the play of similar tones, the sense of values, the astonishing look of the whole work, a daring way of seeing things and of grabbing the viewer's attention, these are things which M. Monet already possesses to a large degree [...] Now we are interested in following the future endeavours of this sincere seascape painter" (P. Mantz quoted in J. Rewald, The History of Impressionism, New York, 1973, 123).

CLAUDE MONET and GEORGE W THORNLEY Meules. Lithograph printed in reddish orange on cream Chine appliqué, circa 1908. 217x270 mm; 8 1/2x10 1/2 inches, full margins. Edition of 25. Signed by both Monet and Thornley in pencil, lower margin. Printed by Belfond, Paris. Published by Goupil, Paris. From L'Album de 20 lithographies d'apres les tableaux de Claude Monet. A superb, well-inked impression of this very scarce lithograph. Estimate $15,000-20,000

Claude Monet (1840-1926) Waterloo Bridge signed 'Claude Monet' (lower right) pastel on paper 12¼ x 19 in. (31.2 x 48.3 cm.) Executed in London in January-February 1901 Sacha Guitry, a gift from the artist before 1921; sale, Sotheby's, London, 22 June 1955, lot 53. Zaphiriou, by whom acquired at the above sale. Arthur Tooth & Sons, London. F. & P. Nathan, Zurich by 1964. Anonymous property, by whom acquired from the above circa 1967, and deposited at Wellesley College, Jewett Art Centre, Massachusetts circa 1968. Anonymous sale, Sotheby's, New York, 12 November 1987, lot 115. Dennis Hotz Fine Art, Johannesburg. Acquired from the above by the present owner. THE PROPERTY OF A PRIVATE COLLECTOR M. Pays, 'M. Sacha Guitry révèle aujourd'hui sa peinture aux Parisiens' in Excelsior, 12 January 1921, p. 5. J. Lorcey, Sacha Guitry, Paris, 1971, p. 102. D. Wildenstein, Claude Monet, Catalogue raisonné, vol. V, Supplément aux peintures, dessins, pastels, index, Paris, 1991, no. P.99 (illustrated pp. 174 & 197). Basel, Kunsthalle, Impressionisten, September - November 1949, no. 24. Waterloo Bridge is part of a series of twenty-six pastels completed by Monet during his 1901 stay in London (Wildenstein, P.83-P.108), which ranks as one of Monet's most significant. Executed from the room Monet rented at the Savoy Hotel on Victoria Embankment, Waterloo Bridge revisits a landscape already explored by the artist in 1871 at the time of his self-imposed London exile during the Franco-Prussian War. By 1901, however, Monet's interest had shifted from subject matter to atmospheric impressions. Waterloo Bridge depicts the bridge's characteristic arcs, some boats gliding over the Thames and, far in the background, a few faint factory chimneys. Fog and mist, however, are the real protagonists of the scene: the shades and colours blend under a grey and dusty layer, recreating the feeling of the wet, dense air of a misty day. Over the bridge, an energetic stream of marks conveys the busy hustle of a commuting crowd fending through the fog. In his letters, Monet expressed his enchantment and despair at the English weather. In early February that year, Monet cheered: "there is no country more extraordinary (than this one) for a painter!" (C. Monet, quoted in D. Wildenstein, Claude Monet, Catalogue raisonné Vol. IV, Letter 1593, London 1901, p. 351). Already in March, however, he bemoaned: "This is not a country where you can finish a picture on the spot; the effects never reappear". Contemplating the uncertain outcome of a series of paintings which he had began during his previous stays in London and enlarged on that same occasion (Wildenstein 1521-1614), Monet thus complained: "I should have made just sketches, real impressions" (C. Monet, quoted in D. Wildenstein, Monet: The Triumph of Impressionism, Cologne, 1999, p. 354). Within this context, Waterloo Bridge presents an important counterexample to Monet's London paintings such as Waterloo Bridge, Morning Fog (Wildenstein, 1559). Exasperated with the volubility of London's weather, Monet was forced to complete many canvases back at Giverny, where he reworked and completed them in his studio, far from his motif. Waterloo Bridge, on the other hand, presents a spontaneous, highly evocative and atmospheric sketch of the city's river side: the sought-after 'real impression' Monet tried to recapture at home on his canvases.

Claude Monet (1840-1926) Bateaux de pêche, temps calme signed 'Claude Monet' (lower right) oil on canvas 25¼ x 21¼ in. (64.1 x 54 cm.) Painted in 1868 Théodore Duret, Paris. Mrs. James F. Sutton, New York; sale, The American Art Association, New York, 25-30 April 1895, lot 85. Durand-Ruel Galleries, New York (acquired at the above sale). Joanny Benoît Peytel, Paris (1898). M. Knoedler & Co., Inc., New York (circa 1923). Comte and Comtesse André de Limur, Washington, D.C. (acquired from the above, circa 1930). Comte and Comtesse Charles de Limur, San Francisco (by descent from the above, circa 1972). By descent from the above to the present owners. Property from the Collection of Charles and Nonie de Limur, San Francisco Some of my earliest memories growing up in Paris in the 1960s were of holding my father's hand as we walked briskly through the Porte de Clignancourt antiques flea markets on his weekly quest to find just the right thing, carefully researched for its authenticity. My father had a keen eye and a sixth sense of what was collectible and what was not, probably something that he inherited from his grandfather, William Henry Crocker, and his parents, Comtesse Ethel Mary Crocker and Comte André de Limur. More than a one hundred-year family tradition, collecting is in our blood. Paintings, books, sculpture, objets d'art, vintage cars, orchids, wine and fine furniture were the underpinnings of how we grew up, creating a rich backdrop filled with names like Monet, Picasso, Vlaminck, Kandinsky, Yeats, Augustus John, Creil, Aubusson, all well loved and lived with in a casual, understated way. Yet, each of the collections had a clear and pointed focus. If an object caught my father's fancy it was because it was of a specific era, a particular style, artist or designer that he sought; nothing was random. With our parents' impeccable taste, born of their own childhoods surrounded by beauty and culture and developed by a lifetime of world travels, our family's homes were decorated thematically, with the paintings driving the color, texture and feeling of each room. The paintings were often hung salon style, where an unknown artist might be found next to a nineteenth century master. There was an easiness to these collections, where nothing seemed precious or sacred and very few items were highlighted separately. You came across gems like unexpected discoveries. Our parents loved to share this beauty with friends, and entertained extensively, whether in their Palais Royal apartment in Paris during the 1960s, in their San Francisco apartment on the top of Russian Hill, or at their getaway in the Napa Valley, where they bottled their award-winning Chardonnay and tended their gardens and olive grove. The depths and breadth of these collections, some of them begun by generations past, were remarkable. Our father's collections were multi-faceted and deep. A cornerstone of one of his favorite collections was a barn find, a 1936 Bugatti with a custom Graber body, built for the 1937 Geneva Car Show. It was not enough to have a famous mark with a hand-tooled body, after careful research and communications with the body maker he bought a 1967 British Alvis TF chassis, his second Alvis, and had it shipped to Switzerland for a specially designed Graber body. The two cars rolled off the atelier floor 30 years apart almost to the day. Every aspect of these collections was cataloged, cross-referenced and categorized. It was an endless labor of love for the pursuit and preservation of impeccable provenance and historical context. It had to be the right wine at dinner, the right 19th century French plates and Venetian glassware, the right 1930s 78 RPM record spinning on the turn table, the right seed brought back from a distant journey which he would then germinate and cultivate into a giant tree. Our mother Eleanor, his constant companion of over fifty years, was the safe-keeper of most of these collections after his death in 2004. However, the zeitgeist of this era is passing, and although those of us who share this unique heritage, myself, my sister Christina and brother Philip, continue the tradition of appreciation and love of art, it is time to part with some of these fabulous items and move them on to new enthusiasts who will cherish and hold them, like this family has for the past many generations. --Charles de Limur Property from the Collection of Charles and Nonie de Limur, San Francisco M. Malingue, Claude Monet, Monaco, 1943, p. 54 (illustrated, p. 146). M. Mount, "A Monet Portrait of Jongkind" in Art Quarterly, 1958, pp. 385 and 388 (illustrated, p. 390). D. Wildenstein, Claude Monet, Biographie et catalogue raisonné, Lausanne, 1974, vol. I, p. 174 (illustrated, p. 175). D. Wildenstein, Claude Monet, Catalogue raisonné, Lausanne, 1991, vol. V, p. 23. D. Wildenstein, Monet, Catalogue raisonné, Cologne, 1996, vol. II, p. 60, no. 124 (illustrated). Berlin, Königliche National-Galerie, 1869. Prague, Exposition de l'art français, 1923, no. 95. Paris, M. Knoedler & Co., Inc., Exposition des Peintures de l'école française du XIXe siècle, 1924, p. 13, no. 45 (titled Barques de pêche). New York, Acquavella Galleries, Inc., Exhibition Claude Monet, October-November 1976, no. 5. Although Monet painted landscapes in and around Paris intermittently during the 1860s, his first full decade of artistic activity was far more extensive undertaken along the Normandy coast, near his native town of Le Havre. Between 1865 and 1868, he painted every summer at Sainte-Adresse, a fishing port turned resort suburb less than three miles from the center of Le Havre, where his aunt Marie-Jeanne Lecadre owned a seaside villa. During the same period, he also worked at Honfleur, Fécamp, and Etretat, all just a short distance from his hometown. He submitted large and important Norman coastal scenes to the Salon each year, eloquent testimony to his ambitions as a painter of the sea. Although he spent much of the following decade at Argenteuil, a burgeoning suburb of Paris, he returned to his native coast annually between 1880 and 1886, painting nearly a hundred and fifty seascapes. He declared to an interviewer in 1889 that he "remained faithful to that sea in front of which I grew up" (quoted in Manet and the Sea, exh. cat., Art Institute of Chicago, 2003, p. 201). In 1917, the elderly Monet made a final trip to the Normandy coast, not to paint but simply to revisit familiar sites and to gaze at the sea. Back home in Giverny, he wrote, "I saw and dreamed about so many memories, so much toil... It's done me good, and I'll get back to work with renewed zeal" (ibid.). Bateaux de pêche, temps calme is one of three views of fishing fleets at sea that Monet painted between the autumn of 1868 and the spring of 1869 at Etretat, a major resort some sixteen miles northeast of Le Havre (Wildenstein, nos. 124-126). Monet had left Paris for Normandy immediately after the Salon of 1868, where his canvas depicting ships leaving the port of Le Havre had garnered a notice from Zola describing him as a "first-class painter of seascapes" and emphasizing the freshness of his touch (Wildenstein, no. 89; location unknown). He spent the early summer of 1868 with his family in Le Havre, finalizing his submissions to a local exhibition that opened in July; one of the four paintings that he showed there, La Jetée du Havre, received a silver medal despite having been rejected earlier by the Salon jury (Wildenstein, no. 109; sale, Christie's, New York, 12 May 1993, lot 15). Shortly thereafter, Monet sold a life-sized portrait of his mistress Camille to Arsène Houssaye, editor of the periodical L'Artiste, for a commendable eight hundred francs (Wildenstein, no. 65; Kunsthalle Bremen). This good fortune enabled him to bring Camille and the couple's infant son Jean, who were unwelcome among his family, to Normandy for the first time, where they set up house at Etretat. In December, Monet reported to his friend and fellow painter Bazille, "I am surrounded by all the things that I love. I spend my time out of doors on the beach when the weather is bad or when boats go out fishing or else I go into the countryside, which is so beautiful here that I find it perhaps more pleasant in winter than in summer... My desire would be to remain forever in a nice corner of nature like this one" (quoted in P. Tucker, Claude Monet, Life and Art, New Haven, 1995, pp. 36-37). Monet was evidently pleased by the three paintings of fishing boats that he produced at Etretat, ultimately deciding to submit the largest of them to the 1869 Salon in place of Le Déjeuner, a huge interior scene that had occupied him for much of the winter (Wildenstein, nos. 126 and 132; fig. 1, and Städelsches Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt). Although both the small fishing villages and the larger ports of the Normandy coast had been transformed by the 1860s into seaside resorts catering to Parisian vacationers, there is little evidence of this momentous change in Monet's work from this decade, and the seascapes from Etretat are no exception. In terms of subject, the paintings of fishing fleets are traditional marines, depicting the time-honored seafaring culture of the region. Monet has even omitted the safe vantage point of a beach or pier to suggest that he too (and by extension, the viewer) is at sea, not a tourist but a native Norman, working in the bracing climate of France's northern coast. Richard Brettell has written, "Collectively, the Norman seascapes from the mid- and late 1860s... convey a powerful natural environment controlled by its native inhabitants with their bodies and their skills in making and maneuvering boats. It is a defiantly seafaring Normandy, in which there are no sandy tourist beaches, no casinos, few pleasure boats... Monet's paintings were completely modern in their facture and bold composition, but their subjects were nearly always the opposite. It was, instead, the modernity of his eye and his sensibility rather than that of his subjects that set Monet's Normandy apart" (Monet in Normandy, exh. cat., Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, 2006, pp. 42 and 44). And nowhere is this modernity of technique more evident than in Bateaux de pêche, temps calme. Unlike Monet's other seascapes from Etretat, which employ a traditional horizontal format, the composition here is vertical, with an elevated vantage point and a high, almost indistinguishable horizon line; the three boats in the foreground, moreover, seem disproportionately large relative to the vessels immediately behind them. The result is a sense of unusually rapid recession into depth, which emphasizes the vast, unfathomable scale of the sea. The concise, abbreviated rendering of forms is far removed from the detailed, descriptive style that Monet had used just a few months earlier at Honfleur and Fécamp (Wildenstein, nos. 116-119; fig. 2). Rather than recalling Jongkind, whom Monet had described at the beginning of the decade as "our only decent painter of seascapes" (quoted in exh. cat., op. cit., 2003, p. 202), Bateaux de pêche pays homage to the deceptively simple and economical style of Manet--the enfant terrible of the 1860s--who had exhibited several seascapes in his solo show in Paris in 1867, which Monet is known to have seen (fig. 3). In contrast to the smooth modeling of conventional painting, Monet's pigment in Bateaux de pêche is laid down in broad, bravura strokes, an early instance of the gestural liberty of brushwork that would soon become one of the central tenets of Impressionism. Robert Herbert has written, "Monet's strokes of paint call attention to themselves and therefore to the artist's gestures, for here at Etretat, half-way through the first decade of his mature activity, Monet was sharing in the development of Impressionism's key feature: exposed brushwork that seems to capture a new spontaneity of vision in front of nature" (Monet on the Normandy Coast: Tourism and Painting, 1867-1886, New Haven, 1994, pp. 24-25). The first owner of the present painting was Théodore Duret, an eminent critic whom Richard Brettell has called "the first conscientious historian of Impressionism and the father of Impressionist studies" (Pissarro and Pontoise: The Painter in a Landscape, New Haven, 1990, p. 164). A man of independent means, heir to a family business manufacturing cognac and other spirits, Duret began to take an interest in art in the early 1860s, after seeing works by Courbet and Corot in the collection of his cousin Etienne Baudry. Duret met Manet in 1865, and the two men quickly forged a close friendship; in 1867, Manet painted a full-length portrait of the dapper young journalist (Rouart and Wildenstein, no. 132; Musée du Petit Palais, Paris). By the end of the decade, Duret had become an ardent supporter of the Impressionists, placing his pen at their service, purchasing their work, and encouraging his friends to do the same. In a series of reviews of the 1870 Salon, Duret lauded the Impressionists as "those newcomers who seem to have the greatest future before them" (quoted in J. Rewald, The History of Impressionism, New York, 1961, p. 244), and in 1878, he published the first major study of their work, Histoire des peintres impressionnistes. Duret met Monet after the Franco-Prussian War and bought his first painting by the artist in 1873 for the healthy sum of 1200 francs (Wildenstein, no. 94; Musée d'Art et d'Histoire, Geneva). When Duret, faced with mounting financial pressure, offered the bulk of his collection at auction in 1894, he opted to keep the present canvas. He was forced to sell the following year, however, and the painting entered the collection of James Sutton, one of the founders of the American Art Association and a key player in the marketing of Impressionism in New York starting in the mid-1880s. (fig. 1) Claude Monet, Bateaux de pêche en mer, 1868-1869. Hill-Stead Museum, Farmington, Connecticut. Barcode: 28852728 (fig. 2) Claude Monet, Bateaux de pêche à Honfleur, 1868. Museu Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon. Barcode: pending (fig. 3) Edouard Manet, Bateaux partant de Boulogne, 1864. The Art Institute of Chicago. Barcode: 28852711