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Lot Essay
During the late summer of 1866, Claude Monet began preparations for one of his most ambitious paintings to date—measuring more than seven feet in width, Port de Honfleur (Wildenstein, no. 77; destroyed in World War II) was a statement piece of enormous proportions, offering an expansive view of the harbor of Honfleur on the Normandy coast. Forming part of an important series of oil paintings created in preparation for this grand project, which he intended to exhibit at the Salon of 1867, Bateaux dans le port de Honfleur reveals the spirit of experimentation and innovation that marked Monet’s style at this crucial moment in his career, as he began to push his art in new, ground-breaking directions, building on the examples of the Barbizon artists and his mentors, Eugène Boudin and Johan Barthold Jongkind.
Situated on the edge of the Seine estuary, Honfleur was a picturesque fishing village well-known to many Parisians, its train station marking the final stop on the route from the capital to the fashionable seaside towns. Having spent much of his formative years in nearby Le Havre, Monet was intensely familiar with this stretch of the Normandy coast, its beaches, harbors and seascapes, its industry and traditions. He later told friends that he had spent more time as a boy on the cliffs and by the sea than he did in the classroom, and was well acquainted with the area’s most striking views and motifs. 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 these momentous changes in Monet’s paintings of these years. Instead, his views capture the timeless, traditional rhythms and character of the area, paying close attention to detail in their descriptions of the boats both at sea and in the harbor, and the bustling play of movement and life along the quays of seaside towns such as Honfleur.
It was this personal attachment and depth of knowledge in Monet’s views of the Normandy coast that Emile Zola enthusiastically highlighted in the artist’s early paintings: “[Monet] is a first-rate painter of seascapes,” he proclaimed. “But he understands the genre in his own special way… In his seascapes, you can always spot the edge of a jetty, the corner of a dock, something that fixes it in time and place… He knows every inch of a boat’s hull, and could rattle off the names of each and every rope in the masting” (“The Actualists” in L’Événement, 1868; quoted in C.F. Stuckey, ed., Monet: A Retrospective, New York, 1985, p. 38). In Bateaux dans le port de Honfleur Monet adopts a focused view onto a corner of the harbor, allowing the sails and intricate rigging of a quartet of ships to dominate the scene. Many of the artist’s paintings from late 1866 depict the array of boats that docked at Honfleur, using unusual viewpoints and innovative compositional strategies to record the bustling flow of marine traffic that passed through the harbor on a daily basis. For example, both Bateaux de pêche, Honfleur (Wildenstein, no. 74; Muzeul National de Artă al României, Bucharest) and Barques de pêche (Wildenstein, no. 76; Private collection) take a tight, close-up view of the hulls of a group of vessels clustered together at port, their forms overlapping and intertwining so that the boundaries between one boat and the next become indecipherable.
In Bateaux dans le port de Honfleur, the quartet of boats in the foreground lead the eye through the scene in a dramatic, sharp, diagonal line, towards the jetty in the distance and the sails of a series of boats still at sea just visible beyond. Different elements appear to connect the vessels to one another visually, from masts, to sails, to rigging, enhancing the sense of recession and creating a continuous line through the painting. Adopting a low vantage point, at the level of the water looking upwards at the towering profiles of the boats, Monet emphasizes the glass-like surface of the water, which dances with rippling, colorful reflections. Captured in broad, gestural strokes of pigment, this section of the canvas is a bold testament to the growing confidence and experimental nature of the artist’s style during this stage of his career. Indeed, as Richard Brettell has noted, it was this aspect of Monet’s early marine compositions that powerfully illustrated the modernity of his vision: “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 an 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 compositions, 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 Museum of San Francisco, 2006, pp. 42-44).
Bateaux dans le port de Honfleur was among the first works by Monet to find an American buyer, entering the collection of the wealthy Philadelphian Alexander J. Cassatt, older brother of the esteemed painter Mary Cassatt. By 1880, when he began to purchase art on a regular basis, Alexander had reached the lofty position of first vice-president of the Pennsylvania Railroad, then one of the largest corporations in the United States. Following the advice of his sister Mary in Paris, he focused his collecting on the Impressionists, purchasing works by Edouard Manet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Edgar Degas, Berthe Morisot, Camille Pissarro and of course, Monet. Alexander and his wife Lois were leading taste-makers among their social circle, and their collecting activities played an important role in encouraging the bourgeoning American market for the French avant-garde—trusting Alexander’s aesthetic judgement and business acumen, a number of his colleagues and friends in Philadelphia followed the Cassatts’ lead and quickly began acquiring works by the Impressionists.
Many of Alexander’s earliest purchases reflected not only his sister’s modern taste, but also his own personal recreational interests, principally horse-racing and sailing—in 1881, Cassatt bought for her brother an Amsterdam harbor scene by Monet, the first of nine paintings by the artist that Alexander would come to own, six of which focused on the theme of boating. Along with the appeal of the subject matter, Cassatt assured her brother that Monet was a sound investment, a sentiment reinforced by their father, Robert, when he wrote to Alexander of a work making its way across the Atlantic to him: “…she has bought you a marine by Monet for 800 francs—It is a beauty, and you will see the day when you will have an offer of 8000 francs for it” (R. Cassatt quoted in G. Tinterow and H. Loyrette, Origins of Impressionism, exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1994, p. 426). Bateaux dans le port de Honfleur remained in the Cassatt family for over a century, passing from one generation to the next, before being purchased by Ann and Gordon Getty over thirty years ago.
Situated on the edge of the Seine estuary, Honfleur was a picturesque fishing village well-known to many Parisians, its train station marking the final stop on the route from the capital to the fashionable seaside towns. Having spent much of his formative years in nearby Le Havre, Monet was intensely familiar with this stretch of the Normandy coast, its beaches, harbors and seascapes, its industry and traditions. He later told friends that he had spent more time as a boy on the cliffs and by the sea than he did in the classroom, and was well acquainted with the area’s most striking views and motifs. 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 these momentous changes in Monet’s paintings of these years. Instead, his views capture the timeless, traditional rhythms and character of the area, paying close attention to detail in their descriptions of the boats both at sea and in the harbor, and the bustling play of movement and life along the quays of seaside towns such as Honfleur.
It was this personal attachment and depth of knowledge in Monet’s views of the Normandy coast that Emile Zola enthusiastically highlighted in the artist’s early paintings: “[Monet] is a first-rate painter of seascapes,” he proclaimed. “But he understands the genre in his own special way… In his seascapes, you can always spot the edge of a jetty, the corner of a dock, something that fixes it in time and place… He knows every inch of a boat’s hull, and could rattle off the names of each and every rope in the masting” (“The Actualists” in L’Événement, 1868; quoted in C.F. Stuckey, ed., Monet: A Retrospective, New York, 1985, p. 38). In Bateaux dans le port de Honfleur Monet adopts a focused view onto a corner of the harbor, allowing the sails and intricate rigging of a quartet of ships to dominate the scene. Many of the artist’s paintings from late 1866 depict the array of boats that docked at Honfleur, using unusual viewpoints and innovative compositional strategies to record the bustling flow of marine traffic that passed through the harbor on a daily basis. For example, both Bateaux de pêche, Honfleur (Wildenstein, no. 74; Muzeul National de Artă al României, Bucharest) and Barques de pêche (Wildenstein, no. 76; Private collection) take a tight, close-up view of the hulls of a group of vessels clustered together at port, their forms overlapping and intertwining so that the boundaries between one boat and the next become indecipherable.
In Bateaux dans le port de Honfleur, the quartet of boats in the foreground lead the eye through the scene in a dramatic, sharp, diagonal line, towards the jetty in the distance and the sails of a series of boats still at sea just visible beyond. Different elements appear to connect the vessels to one another visually, from masts, to sails, to rigging, enhancing the sense of recession and creating a continuous line through the painting. Adopting a low vantage point, at the level of the water looking upwards at the towering profiles of the boats, Monet emphasizes the glass-like surface of the water, which dances with rippling, colorful reflections. Captured in broad, gestural strokes of pigment, this section of the canvas is a bold testament to the growing confidence and experimental nature of the artist’s style during this stage of his career. Indeed, as Richard Brettell has noted, it was this aspect of Monet’s early marine compositions that powerfully illustrated the modernity of his vision: “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 an 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 compositions, 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 Museum of San Francisco, 2006, pp. 42-44).
Bateaux dans le port de Honfleur was among the first works by Monet to find an American buyer, entering the collection of the wealthy Philadelphian Alexander J. Cassatt, older brother of the esteemed painter Mary Cassatt. By 1880, when he began to purchase art on a regular basis, Alexander had reached the lofty position of first vice-president of the Pennsylvania Railroad, then one of the largest corporations in the United States. Following the advice of his sister Mary in Paris, he focused his collecting on the Impressionists, purchasing works by Edouard Manet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Edgar Degas, Berthe Morisot, Camille Pissarro and of course, Monet. Alexander and his wife Lois were leading taste-makers among their social circle, and their collecting activities played an important role in encouraging the bourgeoning American market for the French avant-garde—trusting Alexander’s aesthetic judgement and business acumen, a number of his colleagues and friends in Philadelphia followed the Cassatts’ lead and quickly began acquiring works by the Impressionists.
Many of Alexander’s earliest purchases reflected not only his sister’s modern taste, but also his own personal recreational interests, principally horse-racing and sailing—in 1881, Cassatt bought for her brother an Amsterdam harbor scene by Monet, the first of nine paintings by the artist that Alexander would come to own, six of which focused on the theme of boating. Along with the appeal of the subject matter, Cassatt assured her brother that Monet was a sound investment, a sentiment reinforced by their father, Robert, when he wrote to Alexander of a work making its way across the Atlantic to him: “…she has bought you a marine by Monet for 800 francs—It is a beauty, and you will see the day when you will have an offer of 8000 francs for it” (R. Cassatt quoted in G. Tinterow and H. Loyrette, Origins of Impressionism, exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1994, p. 426). Bateaux dans le port de Honfleur remained in the Cassatt family for over a century, passing from one generation to the next, before being purchased by Ann and Gordon Getty over thirty years ago.