Claude Monet

In early 1884, Monet embarked upon his first extended painting excursion on the Mediterranean, spending three months in the Italian coastal city of Bordighera about ten kilometers east of the French border. For the 43-year-old painter accustomed to the cool tonalities of Normandy, the light of the south represented a welcome change, but also a challenge. In a letter to his friend Théodore Duret, he described the location as a “magical land,” but also complained that he needed a “palette of diamonds and jewels” to do justice to the effects of the light.

As was his custom when painting a heretofore unfamiliar landscape, Monet first made efforts to become acquainted with the place and spent considerable time methodically exploring the new environment. Although he was initially dissatisfied with the coloristic effect of his first studies, already two weeks after his arrival he wrote to his companion Alice: “I am still working like a madman; I am very focused and very pleased with myself: I am making progress, and my first pictures are very bad in comparison to the recent ones. Now that I feel the landscape better, I am daring to put in all the shades of pink and blue; it’s enchanting, it’s delicious.”

In his pictures from Bordighera, Monet concentrated on smaller groups of works in which he painted variations of the same motif. This painting is one of three scenes in which he observed one of the city’s best-known tourist attractions, the Strada Romana with its imposing villas. A towering palm tree and exotic, luxuriantly blooming bushes dominate the foreground of the composition, while the houses—the Villa Goffin on the right and the Casa Rossa on the left—are largely hidden by vegetation. This minimization of architectural elements in favor of the Mediterranean flora occurs in many of Monet’s Bordighera paintings, and in his letters he repeatedly expressed his enthusiasm for the rich plant life all around the Riviera. In the background, the Alpine mountain range appears in the afternoon light in vibrating tones of delicate pink and blue.

Like the painting Villas in Bordighera (1884, Santa Barbara Museum of Art), this work was created on location as a plein air composition. Another view of the Strada Romana painted a little later in Giverny as a commissioned work for Monet’s artist friend Berthe Morisot is now in the collection of the Musée d’Orsay in Paris.

In the four-volume catalogue raisonné of Monet’s paintings compiled by Daniel Wildenstein, the picture from the Hasso Plattner Collection is listed as no. 855 (vol. 2, pp. 319–20).

Daniel Zamani

6e exposition internationale de peinture et de sculpture, Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, May 8–June 8, 1887, no. 73

Claude Monet, Durand-Ruel Galleries, New York, December 9–23, 1916, no. 7

Claude Monet Memorial Exhibition, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, January/February 1927, no. 69

Monet and the Mediterranean, Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, June 8–September 7, 1997; Brooklyn Museum of Art, October 10, 1997–January 4, 1998, no. 6

The Nahmad Collection, Kunsthaus Zürich, October 21, 2011–January 15, 2012

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. 106

Impressionism: The Hasso Plattner Collection, Museum Barberini, Potsdam, from September 5, 2020

June 1884, Galerie Durand-Ruel, Paris, probably purchased from the artist
1884, Galerie Georges Petit, Paris
n.d., Charles Viguier, Paris
May 4, 1906, Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, collection of Charles Viguier, lot 51
Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, acquired at the above sale
1911, Galerie Bernheim-Jeune, Paris
1911, Lederlin
n.d., Galerie Rosenberg, Paris
December 4, 1916, Galerie Durand-Ruel, Paris, acquired from the above
December 15, 1916, Mrs. E. A. Faust, acquired from the above
John Levy Galleries, New York
February 9, 1922, E. W. Edwards, Cincinnati, acquired from the above
n.d., William and Eleanor Wood Prince, Chicago, inherited from the above
November 6, 2008, Christie’s, New York, lot 35, consigned by the above
by 2012, The Nahmad Collection
December 2014, purchased from a private collection

Octave Mirbeau, “L'exposition internationale de la rue de Sèze,” in Gil Blas (May 13, 1887)

Gustave Geffroy, “Salon de 1887. Hors du Salon: Claude Monet,” in La Justice (June 2, 1887)

Gustave Geffroy, “Histoire de l'impressionnisme,” in La vie artistique 3,2 (1894), p. 71

Gustave Geffroy, Claude Monet: Sa vie, son temps, son œuvre, vol. 4, Paris 1922, p. 273

Lionello Venturi, Les Archives de l’Impressionnisme, Paris/New York 1939, p. 281

Daniel Wildenstein, Claude Monet: Biographie et catalogue raisonné, vol. 2, Lausanne 1979, no. 855, p. 114, 253, ill. p. 115

Daniel Wildenstein, Claude Monet: Biographie et catalogue raisonné, vol. 5, Lausanne 1991, p. 41, 102, D 280

Marianne Alphant, Claude Monet: Une vie dans le paysage, Paris 1993, p. 396

Daniel Wildenstein, Monet: Catalogue Raisonné. Werkverzeichnis, vol. 2, Cologne 1996, no. 855, ill. p. 319

Monet and the Mediterranean, exh. cat. Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth 1997, no. 6, p. 78, ill. p. 79

The Nahmad Collection, exh. cat. Kunsthaus Zürich, Zurich 2011, p. 46, 226, ill. p. 47

Impressionism: The Art of Landscape, exh. cat. Museum Barberini, Potsdam 2017, no. 88, p. 224/25, ill. p. 228

Claude Monet: The Truth of Nature, exh. cat. Denver Art Museum, Denver 2019, no. 106, p. 220, ill. p. 224

Monet: Orte, exh. cat. Museum Barberini, Potsdam 2020, no. 106, p. 220, ill. p. 224