Claude Monet
Frost, 1875
On view
39 further works by Monet
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Oil on canvas, 50 x 61 cm
Signed lower right: Claude Monet
Inv.-no. MB-Mon-05
Standing side by side, Claude Monet and Pierre-Auguste Renoir painted the same view of this garden in winter. Both used finely nuanced shades of brown and blue, although Monet added an element of warmth to his view by means of yellowish light and a touch of red. He executed the branches with strong brushstrokes, while Renoir’s depiction of the bushes is more filigree (Musée de l’Orangerie, Paris).
More than any other Impressionist, Claude Monet was fascinated by colored reflections on surfaces covered in snow, frost, ice, or hoarfrost. Around 140 winter paintings are documented in his oeuvre—a predilection inspired by similar motifs in the colored Japanese woodcuts he enthusiastically collected. Frost belongs to a group of eighteen landscapes painted by Monet in the winter of 1874–75 during his time in Argenteuil. Although many of them show the town after the unusually heavy snowfall of December 1874, this painting was probably made in January or February of 1875.
In the left half of the picture, the variegated blue tones of the hoarfrost-covered meadow contrast with the brown and orange of the trees, while the glowing white façades of the houses in the background set a stark accent. As so often in Monet’s work, the composition lacks the distinct focal point required by the conventions of academic landscape painting. The unusual division of the image into shaded and sunlit halves evokes an interplay between foreground and background elements.
In the four-volume catalogue raisonné of Monet’s paintings compiled by Daniel Wildenstein, Frost is listed as no. 363 (vol. 2, p. 149). Other winter scenes from the same series are now in collections including the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston (nos. 348 and 357), the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City (no. 348), and the Kunstmuseum Basel (no. 361).
Daniel Zamani
Impressionism: The Art of Landscape, Museum Barberini, Potsdam, January 21–May 28, 2017
Claude Monet: The Truth of Nature, Denver Art Museum, October 20, 2019–February 2, 2020
Monet: Orte, Museum Barberini, Potsdam, February 22–July 19, 2020, no. 45
Impressionism: The Hasso Plattner Collection, Museum Barberini, Potsdam, from September 5, 2020
n.d., Hector Brame, Paris
1904, Galerie Bernheim-Jeune, Paris
1904, Mme Monteux, Paris
n.d., Galerie Bernheim-Jeune, Paris
1908, Bernhard Koehler, Berlin
n.d., Kunsthandlung Franz Resch, Gauting
1954, Collection Georg Schäfer, Schweinfurt, acquired from the above
May 4, 2005, Christie’s, New York, lot 17, consigned by the above
Edgar M. Bronfman, New York, acquired at the above sale
May 6, 2014, Christie’s, New York, Edgar M. Bronfman estate, lot 18
Daniel Wildenstein, Claude Monet: Biographie et catalogue raisonné, vol. 1, Lausanne 1974, no. 363, p. 268, ill. p. 269
Daniel Wildenstein, Monet: Catalogue Raisonné. Werkverzeichnis, vol. 2, Cologne 1996, no. 363, p. 150, ill. p. 149
Felix Billeter and Andrea Pophanken (Ed.), Die Moderne und ihre Sammler. Französische Kunst in deutschem Privatbesitz vom Kaiserreich zur Weimarer Republik, Berlin 2001, p. 270
Impressionism: The Art of Landscape, exh. cat. Museum Barberini, Potsdam 2017, no. 75, p. 43, 49, 201, ill. p. 209/10
Claude Monet: The Truth of Nature, exh. cat. Denver Art Museum, Denver 2019, no. 45, ill. p. 150
Monet: Orte, exh. cat. Museum Barberini, Potsdam 2020, no. 45, ill. p. 150
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