Claude Monet
The Fort of Antibes, 1888
On view
39 further works by Monet
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Oil on canvas, 65 x 81 cm
Signed and dated lower left: Claude Monet 88
Inv.-no. MB-Mon-25
Claude Monet shows the historical center of Antibes, a burgeoning tourist site on the Côte d’Azur, against the silhouette of the snow-covered Alps. He increased the luminosity of the colors to convey the intense southern light in paint. Starting with white and adding other colors, he lightened the tonal values to produce blue, red, green, and orange hues.
From January to May 1888, Claude Monet spent four months in Antibes—a painting excursion in which he produced 39 compositions. His return to the sunny Riviera was probably inspired by the success of his first extended painting campaign on the Mediterranean, when he had visited the northern Italian city of Bordighera in 1884. At the advice of his writer friend Guy de Maupassant, Monet took up residence in the artist’s hostel Château de la Pinède during his stay in Antibes.
This composition is one of a group of several works painted by Monet from the Plage du Ponteil, in which he turned his gaze toward the architectural sights of the old city: the fortification Bastion Saint-André along with the Château Grimaldi and the cathedral of Notre-Dame-de-la-Platea. The rocky promontory jutting into the sea in the middle ground on the left is the outer end of the Pointe d’Illette. Monet’s location at a considerable distance from the motif enabled him to devote the expansive foreground of the image entirely to the water sparkling in the afternoon sun. Rendered as a web of vibrating blue and green tones, it finds its echo in the cyan-colored sky. In the center of the painting, the silhouette of the city and the panorama of snow-covered Alps with accents in pink, ochre, and white form a decorative contrast to the rest of the visual field.
In the four-volume catalogue raisonné of Monet’s paintings compiled by Daniel Wildenstein, The Fort of Antibes is listed as no. 1161a (vol. 3, p. 442). A closely related work that also shows a view of the old city from the Plage du Ponteil is now in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.
Daniel Zamani
Monet – Rodin, Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, June/July 1889, no. 100 (?)
An Exhibition of Paintings by Claude Monet, St. Botolph Club, Boston, March 28–April 9, 1892, no. 6
Claude Monet Memorial Exhibition, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, January/February 1927, no. 77
French Impressionists Influence American Artists, Lowe Art Museum, Coral Gables, 1971, no. 113
From Neoclassicism to Impressionism. French Paintings from the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art, Kyoto, May 30–July 2, 1989; Hokkaido Museum of Modern Art, Sapporo, July 15–August 20, 1989; Sogo Museum of Art, Yokohama, August 30–October 30, 1989, no. 71
Monet and His Contemporaries from the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Bunkamura Museum of Art, Tokyo, October 17, 1992–January 17, 1993; Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Modern Art, Kobe, January 23–March 21, 1993
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. 49
Monet, Renoir and the Impressionist Landscape, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, June 1–August 27, 2000; Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, September 19–December 10, 2000; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston January 21–April 15, 2001; National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin, January 22–April 2002
Claude Monet 1840-1926: Masterworks from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Bellagio Gallery of Fine Art, Las Vegas, 2004/05
Impressionism Abroad: Boston and French Painting, Royal Academy of Arts, London; Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, 2005/06
L'Età di Courbet e Monet, Villa Manin, Passariano, 2009/10, no. 87
European Masterpieces, Moris Arts Center Gallery, Tokyo; Municipal Museum of Art, Kyoto, 2010
The Mediterranean. From Courbet to Monet and Matisse, Palazzo Ducale, Genua, November 27, 2010–May 1, 2011
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. 108
Impressionism: The Hasso Plattner Collection, Museum Barberini, Potsdam, from September 5, 2020
June 6, 1890, Galerie
Durand-Ruel, Paris, purchased from the artist
September 25, 1890, Peter Chardon Brooks, Jr., Boston, purchased from
the above through Joseph Foxcroft Cole, Boston
n.d., Eleanor Brooks (Mrs. Richard M.) Saltonstall, Boston, inherited
from the above
1962, Private collection, inherited from the above
January 10, 1978, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, acquired as gift from the
above, inv.-no. 1978.634
November 2, 2011, Sotheby’s, New York, lot 9, consigned by the above
J. Le Fustec, “L'exposition,” in La République francaise (June 28, 1889), p. 3 (?)
Daniel Wildenstein, Claude Monet: Biographie et catalogue raisonné, vol. 5, Lausanne 1991, no. 2014, ill. p. 15
Daniel Wildenstein, Monet: Catalogue Raisonné. Werkverzeichnis, vol. 3, Cologne 1996, no. 1161a, p. 441, ill. p. 439
Christiane Éluère, Monet et la Riviera, Paris 2006, no. 92, ill. p. 123–25
Claude Monet 1840–1926: A tribute to Daniel Wildenstein and Katia Granoff, exh. cat. Wildenstein, New York 2007, p. 97
Impressionism: The Art of Landscape, exh. cat. Museum Barberini, Potsdam 2017, no. 87, p. 225, ill. p. 222, 227
Claude Monet: The Truth of Nature, exh. cat. Denver Art Museum, Denver 2019, no. 108, p. 220, ill. p. 226
Monet: Orte, exh. cat. Museum Barberini, Potsdam 2020, no. 108, p. 220, ill. p. 226
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