.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
Claude Monet painted La maison dans les roses in the Summer of 1925. This painting reveals the constant power of innovation that fuelled Monet, even here in his old age. The expressionistic treatment of the oils, which swirl in a manner that anticipates Action Painting, echoes the Nymphéas upon which Monet was still working at the time, which have proved to be such an inspiration to later generations of painters. Here, that expressionism is combined with the bold colours to capture the vivid appearance of the roses in Monet's legendary garden at Giverny and lend the entire composition an almost abstract quality anticipating, say, Sam Francis and Mark Rothko.
La maison dans les roses shows Monet's own home immersed within the flowers which he loved so much, which he had arranged over the previous four decades in order to be able to capture the intensely colouristic visions for which he remains renowned. Daniel Wildenstein has referred to the series of paintings that Monet painted during the Summer of 1925 as the artist's 'swan song, a marvellous farewell to his house and his roses' (D. Wildenstein, Monet or The Triumph of Impressionism, Cologne, 1996, p. 442). Here, Monet has depicted his motif through an incandescent palette that shimmers, an effect accentuated trhough the bold, energetic brushtrokes. The composite ensures that the surface of the picture is almost entirely filled with the flaming red of the blooms, echoing the immersive perspectives that he was using to such great effect in his celebrated Nymphéas, the series of water-lilies that he was completing during the same period.
La maison dans les roses shows Monet's own home immersed within the flowers which he loved so much, which he had arranged over the previous four decades in order to be able to capture the intensely colouristic visions for which he remains renowned. Daniel Wildenstein has referred to the series of paintings that Monet painted during the Summer of 1925 as the artist's 'swan song, a marvellous farewell to his house and his roses' (D. Wildenstein, Monet or The Triumph of Impressionism, Cologne, 1996, p. 442). Here, Monet has depicted his motif through an incandescent palette that shimmers, an effect accentuated trhough the bold, energetic brushtrokes. The composite ensures that the surface of the picture is almost entirely filled with the flaming red of the blooms, echoing the immersive perspectives that he was using to such great effect in his celebrated Nymphéas, the series of water-lilies that he was completing during the same period.