Claude Monet

In the fall and winter of 1908, Monet spent ten weeks in Venice, a city that more than almost any other had cast its spell on generations of artists before him. In addition to the famous 18th-century vedutepainters such as Canaletto or Bellotto, many other artists had also depicted the palaces and churches along the canals. Monet was well acquainted with the work of predecessors such as J. M. W. Turner and James McNeill Whistler, as well as French colleagues like Eugène Boudin, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Henri-Edmond Cross, and Paul Signac. Monet’s sojourn in Venice was his final trip abroad, and the group of 37 city views he painted there was the last series of works he would create outside his garden in Giverny after 1903. As in his previous journeys to London between 1899 and 1901, here too Monet focused primarily on the fleeting visual interaction between architectural structures and luminous bodies of water. In his letters, he spoke enthusiastically of the “unique light” that characterized Venice. Not only the expanses of water, but also the polychrome stone buildings with their ornamental facades provided him with the opportunity to explore the most subtle reflections of color.

In his Venetian works, Monet chose a limited number of motifs which he observed repeatedly, always at the same time of day and from the same vantage point. While many of his paintings depict prominent buildings such as the Palazzo Contarini or the Palazzo Ducale, the composition shown here belongs to a group of three works in which he focused on a less famous motif: the canal Rio della Salute, named after the nearby Baroque church of Santa Maria della Salute.

As with many of his images of the Palazzo Ducale, Monet chose to depict the Rio della Salute from a vantage point that could be accessed only from the canal itself. On numerous occasions he allowed himself to be rowed out to the same spot by a gondolier. In the glistening afternoon light, stone bridges and houses are shrouded in a diffuse veil of haze, while architectural details such as the ornamentation of windows and balconies are more clearly developed. The apse of the church of San Gregorio is only barely visible in the background on the right. As with his depictions of the Thames bridge in London, Monet’s views of Venice are water landscapes. The artist himself used the term “paysages d’eau” for this series of works, a designation that would also serve as the subtitle for his exhibition of water lilies in the gallery of Paul Durand-Ruel a year after his trip to Venice.

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. 1762 (vol. 4, p. 827). Another variation of this motif is now in the collection of the Pola Museum of Art in Hakone.

Daniel Zamani

Claude Monet: Venise, Galerie Bernheim-Jeune, Paris, May 28–June 8, 1912, no. 23

Claude Monet, Galerie Durand-Ruel, Paris, March 2–21, 1914, no. 8

French Paintings loaned by Durand-Ruel, Taylor Art Gallery, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, February 1925

Inaugural Exhibition, Art Gallery, Toronto, January 29–February 28, 1926

International Exhibition, Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, September/October 1926

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. 110

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

April 10, 1912, Galerie Bernheim-Jeune and Galerie Durand-Ruel, Paris
June 1, 1912, Galerie Durand-Ruel, Paris
April 6, 1954, Galerie Charpentier, Paris, lot 54
n.d., O’Hana, London
n.d., Clariça Davidson, London
n.d., Marlborough-Gerson Gallery, New York
1965, Mr. and Mrs. John Mosler, New York
November 5, 1981, Sotheby Parke Bernet, New York, lot 183b
n.d., Mr. and Mrs. Seward Johnson, Princeton
n.d., Yoyoi Gallery, Tokyo
May 14, 1985, Sotheby’s, New York, lot 39
Private collection, London, acquired at the above sale
November 28, 1995, Christie’s, London, lot 14, unsold
1995, Private collection
May 6, 2008, Christie’s, New York, lot 17, consigned by the above, unsold
2012, The Nahmad Collection
April 2013, purchased from a private collection

Claude Monet: Venise, exh. cat. Galerie Bernheim-Jeune, Paris 1912, no. 23

Arsène Alexandre, “La vie artistique, Claude Monet et Venise,” in Le Figaro (May 29, 1912), p. 4

Gustave Geffroy, “La Venise de Claude Monet,” in La Dépêche (May 30, 1912), p. 1

Henri Genet, “Beaux-Arts et Curiosité: Les 'Venise' de Claude Monet,” in L'Opinion (June 1, 1912), p. 698

Georges Lecomte, “Un radieux poème à la gloire de Venise,” in Le Matin (June 3, 1912), p. 6

André Michel, “Promenades aux Salons VI,” in Journal des Débats (June 5, 1912), p. 1

“Beaux-Arts et Curiosité: Venise vue par Claude Monet,” in Le Temps (June 11, 1912), p. 4

Gustave Geffroy, Claude Monet: Sa vie, son temps, son œuvre, vol. 4, Paris 1922, p. 318

Grace Seiberling, Monet's Series, New York/London 1981, no. 22, p. 210, ill. p. 381

Daniel Wildenstein, Claude Monet: Biographie et catalogue raisonné, vol. 4, Lausanne 1985, no. 1762, p. 384, ill. p. 243

Daniel Wildenstein, Claude Monet: Biographie et catalogue raisonné, vol. 5, Lausanne 1991, p. 53

Daniel Wildenstein, Monet: Catalogue Raisonné. Werkverzeichnis, vol. 4, Cologne 1996, no. 1762, p. 827, ill. p. 827

The Nahmad Collection, exh. cat. Kunsthaus Zürich, Zurich 2011, p. 44, 226, ill. p. 45

Impressionism: The Art of Landscape, exh. cat. Museum Barberini, Potsdam 2017, no. 90, p. 226, ill. p. 230

Claude Monet: The Truth of Nature, exh. cat. Denver Art Museum, Denver 2019, no. 110, ill. p. 228

Monet: Orte, exh. cat. Museum Barberini, Potsdam 2020, no. 110, ill. p. 228