Claude Monet

In 1883, Monet moved to Giverny, a village at the confluence of the Seine River and the Epte tributary about 80 kilometers northwest of Paris. With less than 300 inhabitants, the small farming community offered him an idyllic environment similar to that of nearby Vétheuil, where he had lived from 1878 to 1881. Monet was to remain in Giverny until his death in 1926, and there he installed his garden with the water-lily pond. First, however, he turned his attention to the agricultural lands around him with their luxuriant fields and towering rows of poplar trees, documenting the changes in the landscape with the changing of the seasons.

Under the Poplars was painted in 1887 in the plain of Les Essarts between the Epte and the Seine. The thickly grown meadow of flowers in the foreground is depicted in glowing yellow with accents of unmixed white, green, and red. It is horizontally surmounted by a chain of hills in pale violet and a cloudless sky in delicate white and blue. The graceful, vertically ascending trunks of the young poplars in the middle ground connect the various motifs and lend the composition a sense of rhythm and dynamism. As so often with Monet, strolling human figures are integrated into the natural setting, strengthening the impression of a clear and untroubled summer day in the country. The young woman in the center foreground is Germaine Hoschedé, the daughter of Monet’s companion Alice, whom he would marry in 1893. Behind her to the left is one of Monet’s sons, either Jean-Pierre or Michel.

Monet painted these two figures again around the same time in another closely related composition (Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart). Both paintings were probably shown in the Monet/Rodin exhibition of 1899, which took place in the gallery of Georges Petit in Paris at the same time as the World Exposition. The much-acclaimed exhibition with its innovative dialogue between sculpture and painting established Monet’s international reputation as one of the leading landscape painters in Europe.

In the four-volume catalogue raisonné of Monet’s paintings compiled by Daniel Wildenstein, the painting from the Hasso Plattner Collection is listed as no. 1136 (vol. 3, p. 430).

Daniel Zamani

Monet – Rodin, Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, June/July 1889, no. 144 (?)

La Joie de vivre au tournant du siècle, Wildenstein Gallery, Tokyo, October 25–November 22, 1991, no. 5

Impressionism: The Art of Landscape, Museum Barberini, Potsdam, January 21–May 28, 2017

Rodin im Dialog mit Monet: Die gemeinsame Ausstellung im Jahr 1889, Museum Barberini, Potsdam, May 31–October 3, 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. 71

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

n.d., Potter Palmer, Chicago
n.d., Bertha Palmer, Chicago
1922, The Art Institute of Chicago, acquired from the estate of the above, inv.-no. 22-439
March 2, 1944, Parke-Bernet Galleries, New York, lot 59
Thomas J. Watson, New York, acquired at the above sale
n.d., Private collection, Switzerland
n.d., J. Barry Donahue Fine Arts, Litchfield
1998, Private collection, USA, acquired from the above
November 4, 2014, Sotheby’s, New York, lot 28, consigned by the above

The Art Institute of Chicago (ed.), Handbook of Paintings and Drawings, Chicago 1922, no. 834, p. 68

M. C., “Monet in the Art Institute,” in, Bulletin of the Art Institute of Chicago 19 (February 1925), p. 19

Oscar Reuterswärd, Monet: En konstnarhistorik, Stockholm 1948, ill. p. 280

Daniel Wildenstein, Claude Monet: Biographie et catalogue raisonné, vol. 3, Lausanne 1979, no. 1136, p. 92, ill. p. 93

Roger T. Dunn, The Monet-Rodin Exhibition at the Galerie Georges Petit in 1889: A Study of the Significance of the Exhibition and its Setting, the Work of the two Artists at Mid-Career, and their Artistic and Social Relationship, Ann Arbor 1980, no. 144, p. 80, 250

Claude Monet – Auguste Rodin. Centenaire de l'exposition de 1889, exh. cat. Musée Rodin, Paris 1989, no. 144, ill. p. 99

La Joie de vivre au tournant du siecle, exh. cat. Wildenstein Gallery, Tokyo 1991, no. 5

Marianne Alphant, Claude Monet: Une vie dans le paysage, Paris 1993, ill. p. 372

Daniel Wildenstein, Monet: Catalogue Raisonné. Werkverzeichnis, vol. 3, Cologne 1996, no. 1136, p. 430, ill. p. 429

Impressionism: The Art of Landscape, exh. cat. Museum Barberini, Potsdam 2017, no. 48, p. 158, 202, ill. p. 161

Claude Monet: The Truth of Nature, exh. cat. Denver Art Museum, Denver 2019, no. 71, ill. p. 183

Monet: Orte, exh. cat. Museum Barberini, Potsdam 2020, no. 71, ill. p. 183