Claude Monet

The dramatic rock formations of the northern Atlantic coast of France were among Monet’s favorite motifs. His younger brother Léon owned a summer house at the small seaside resort of Les Petites-Dalles northeast of the town of Fécamp in Normandy. As early as 1880 and 1881, the artist had painted four pictures of the surrounding area, which was famous for its glowing white limestone cliffs and was thus known as the Alabaster Coast (Côte d’Albâtre). In August of 1884, he returned there for a short painting excursion and produced three views of the imposing Falaise d’Amont.

In the glittering light of the midday sun, the steeply jutting cliff glows in vibrating tones of orange, rose, yellow, and red, forming a dramatic contrast to the dark blue-violet of the sky. In his rendering of the cliffs, Monet at times applied the paint in unmixed, impasto brushstrokes whose relief-like quality resembles the texture of the stone and lends a tactile quality to the painting. Though hardly recognizable at first glance, upon closer examination the colorful daubs of paint along the waterline reveal themselves as the figures of bathers. As in many of Monet’s depictions of the Atlantic coast, here too the human element recedes behind a focus on the majestic, elemental power of cliffs and ocean. At the same time, the blurred edges of the forms simulate the effect of a hazy veil of light, challenging the beholder to a participatory form of viewing. Among Monet’s late paintings of the coast, few embody the premise of Impressionism—the depiction of an object as it reveals itself to the eye under specific, ephemeral optical conditions—as strikingly as this radically abstracted composition.

In the four-volume catalogue raisonné of Monet’s paintings compiled by Daniel Wildenstein, the painting in the Hasso Plattner Collection is listed as no. 905 (vol. 2, p. 339). Of the two other versions (nos. 903 and 904), one is now in the collection of the Kreeger Museum in Washington, D.C.

Daniel Zamani

Painting of Various Schools, Union League Club, New York, March 1913, no. 19 (Highlands on the French Coast)

Cl. Monet, Durand-Ruel Galleries, New York, March 1923, no. 9 (Falaise à Pourville)

Cl. Monet, Galerie Durand-Ruel, Paris, May 22–September 30, 1959, no. 40

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. 98

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

November 17, 1884, Galerie Durand-Ruel, Paris, purchased from the artist
October 10, 1891, Charles T. Yerkes, Philadelphia, acquired from the above
n.d., Emilie Grigsby, New York
January 25, 1912, Anderson Galleries, New York, collection of Emilie Grigsby, lot 1154
Durand-Ruel Galleries, New York, acquired at the above sale, until 1949
n.d., Maurice Ferrier, Geneva
n.d., Acquavella Galleries, New York, acquired from the above
ca. 1986, Mamdouha and Elmer Holmes Bobst, New York
May 10, 2016, Sotheby’s, New York, lot 25, consigned by the above

Elmer Holmes Bobst, Bobst: The Autobiography of a Pharmaceutical Pioneer, New York 1973

Daniel Wildenstein, Claude Monet: Biographie et catalogue raisonné, vol. 2, Lausanne 1979, no. 905, p. 132, ill. p. 133

Daniel Wildenstein, Monet: Catalogue Raisonné. Werkverzeichnis, vol. 2, Cologne 1996, no. 905, p. 338, ill. p. 338

Impressionism: The Art of Landscape, exh. cat. Museum Barberini, Potsdam 2017, no. 13, p. 92, ill. p. 105–6

Claude Monet: The Truth of Nature, exh. cat. Denver Art Museum, Denver 2019, no. 98, ill. p. 211

Monet: Orte, exh. cat. Museum Barberini, Potsdam 2020, no. 98, ill. p. 211