Claude Monet

Monet’s travel activity reached its peak in the 1880s. Many of his paintings from this period were the result of week-long working trips While Monet began all of his compositions directly in front of the motif, he usually reworked them upon his return to Giverny. Of all the regions to which he traveled during these years, none fascinated him more than the northern coasts of France. He made repeated visits to seaside resorts in Normandy such as Étretat, Pourville, and Varengeville, but also spent a number of weeks on the windswept island of Belle-Île-en-Mer in Brittany. During a painting excursion to Étretat in early 1883, he was inspired by the work of his role model Gustave Courbet. His large painting The Étretat Cliffs after the Storm (Musée d’Orsay, Paris)depicts the dramatic rock formations of the Porte d’Aval and had been well received at the Salon of 1870. On February 1, Monet wrote to his later wife Alice Hoschedé: “I want to paint a large picture of the cliffs of Étretat, even if it is quite daring of me to do so after Courbet, who did it so admirably; but I will try to do it differently.” Monet’s treatment of the seaside motif went beyond just one canvas: instead, he rendered the view of the cliffs in a series of eight works, methodically varying not only the time of day and weather conditions but also the vantage point. The painting The Cliff, Étretat, Sunset from the collection of the North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh also belongs to this series.

During another excursion to Étretat two years later, Monet once again devoted a series of nine works to the Porte d’Aval. In this version, the viewer’s gaze moves in an arc from the sunlit cliffs in the left foreground toward the center of the composition. An impasto stroke of intense pink in the opening in the cliff sets a striking accent, subtly echoed in the reflections on the water. While in Courbet’s painting the objects are clearly contoured and the cliffs and ocean rendered in considerable detail, Monet’s version shows the loose brushwork characteristic of his Impressionist paintings of the 1880s. As in most of his pictures of the Atlantic coast, here too the painter chose a deserted scene, evoking a feeling of the contemplative observation of nature.

In the four-volume catalogue raisonné of Monet’s paintings compiled by Daniel Wildenstein, The Cliff and the Porte d’Aval is listed as no. 1018 (vol. 3, p. 385). A variation of the motif closely related in composition is now in the collection of the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. In 1886, the painting in the Hasso Plattner Collection was acquired by the Parisian opera singer Jean-Baptiste Faure, one of the most important early supporters of the Impressionists. Another key work in the Hasso Plattner Collection, The Rose Bushes in the Garden at Montgeron from 1876, was likewise in Faure’s possession.

Daniel Zamani

IX. Jahrgang. I. Ausstellung, Manet-Monet-Ausstellung, Sammlung des französischen Opernsängers Faure, Paul Cassirer, Berlin, September 22–October 28, 1906, no. 38 (Felsen in Etretat, 1885)

Dix-sept tableaux de Cl. Monet de la collection Faure, Galerie Durand-Ruel, Paris, March 19–31, 1906, no. 15

5e Exposition Internationale d'Art, Barcelona, April–June 1907, no. 11

Paysages par Cl. Monet et Renoir, Galerie Durand-Ruel, Paris, May 1–June 30, 1908, no. 27

The Painting of France, since the French revolution, M. H. de Young Memorial Museum, San Francisco, 1940/1941, no. 100 (?, The Cliff at Etretat)

French painting from David to Toulouse-Lautrec. Loans from French and American Museums and collections, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, February 6–March 26, 1941, no. 94

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. 87

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

1886, Jean-Baptiste Faure, Paris, purchased from the artist
1907, Galerie Durand-Ruel, Paris
1908, Edmond Décap, Paris
ca. 1940, Maurice Barret-Décap, Paris
n.d., Kahn-Sriber, Paris
July 1, 1975, Sotheby Parke Bernet, London, lot 33
ca. 1996, Private collection, USA
January 2010, purchased from a private collection

Fern-Panil, “Petites expositions: De quelques tableaux de Manet et de Monet exposés chez Durand-Ruel,” in Le Soir (March 29, 1906)

Arsène Alexandre, “Cl. Monet: His Career and Work,” in The Studio (March 1908), 87–106, ill. p. 91

The Painting of France, since the French revolution, exh. cat. M. H. de Young Memorial Museum, San Francisco 1940, no. 100 (?, The Cliff at Etretat)

French painting from David to Toulouse-Lautrec: Loans from French and American Museums and collections, exh. cat. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 1941, no. 94, p. 31, ill. p. 51

M. Rostand, Quelques amateurs de l'époque impressionniste, Paris (École du Louvre, PhD Diss., unpublished) 1955, p. 47

Daniel Wildenstein, Claude Monet: Biographie et catalogue raisonné, vol. 2, Lausanne 1979, p. 170, ill. p. 171

Daniel Wildenstein, Claude Monet: Biographie et catalogue raisonné, vol. 5, Lausanne 1991, p. 99, 101

Daniel Wildenstein, Monet: Catalogue Raisonné. Werkverzeichnis, vol. 3, Cologne 1996, no. 1018, p. 384, ill. p. 383

Bernhard Echte and Walter Feilchenfeldt (ed.), Kunstsalon Paul Cassirer: Die Ausstellungen 1905–1908, vol. 3, Wädenswil 2013, ill. p. 260

Impressionism: The Art of Landscape, exh. cat. Museum Barberini, Potsdam 2017, no. 14, p. 59/60, ill. p. 108

Claude Monet: The Truth of Nature, exh. cat. Denver Art Museum, Denver 2019, no. 87, ill. p. 202/3

Monet: Orte, exh. cat. Museum Barberini, Potsdam 2020, no. 87, ill. p. 202