Claude Monet

Charles Deudon, Paris (acquired directly from the artist in May 1880)
Paul Rosenberg, Paris 
Paul Rosenberg & Co.,  New York
Acquired from the above on April 3, 1957

Paris, Paul Rosenberg, Oeuvres de grands maîtres du XIXe siècle, 1922, no. 57
Paris, Paul Rosenberg, Quelques oeuvres par Claude Monet, 1924, no. 6
Paris, Durand-Ruel, Monet, 1928, no. 15
Paris, Orangerie, Monet, 1931, no. 36
New York, Paul Rosenberg & Co., Ingres to Lautrec, 1952, no. 11
Chicago, The Art Institute, Claude Monet: 1840-1926, 1995, no. 58

Daniel Wildenstein, Claude Monet, Biographie et Catalogue Raisonné, vol. I, Lausanne and Paris, 1974, no. 584, illustrated p. 367
Daniel Wildenstein, Monet, Catalogue Raisonné, vol. II, Cologne, 1996, no. 584, illustrated p. 226
David Joel, Monet at Vétheuil: 1878-1883, London, 2002, discussed p. 97

In April of 1878, after living in Argenteuil for seven years, Monet moved to Vétheuil, a village on the Seine about twenty-five miles northwest of Paris.  The artist, his wife, and two young sons shared a house with the family of his friend and patron Ernest Hoschedé.  Hoschedé, formerly extremely successful as a businessman, had suffered financial setbacks that led to the shared living arrangements.  The Monet family, too, had little money, and the two-and-one-half years spent in the village were challenging.  Nevertheless, Monet painted well and produced numerous works that reflect his willingness to consider alternatives to the “high” or “classic” Impressionist style that had driven his work for most of the 1870s.  The time in Vétheuil marks a critical moment in Monet’s development, and many of the pictures (see fig. 1) strike a remarkable balance between the naturalist-realist origins of Impressionism and the bold experimentation that became such an important element in the “series” paintings that began to dominate his work in the late 1880s.

During the spring and summer of 1880, Monet painted nearly thirty views of the area in and around Vétheuil.  Four depict views along the Chantemesle – La Roche-Guyon road, the thoroughfare where Monet’s house was located (see fig. 2).  The most beautiful of the group is the present work – La Route de Vétheuil.  It is the largest of the four, and it is the most significant in terms of style, paint handling, and composition.  Here, the sweeping curve of the road is typical of the inherently strong, relatively simple shapes that began to appear in Monet’s work in the early 1880s.  In composition it foreshadows many of the views of the coast of Normandy that he painted during the 1880s and 1890s, as well as the Poplar series of 1891 (see fig. 3). 

Increasingly dissatisfied with the limitations of orthodox Impressionism, in the early eighties Monet began to experiment with a variety of brushstrokes, compositional formats, and motifs.  The changes in his work are largely a function of his ever-increasing emphasis on the elements of painting itself: brushstroke, palette (color), surface, and compositional format.  Technical and formal issues began to dominate the need for visually accurate transcriptions of light and color that were so important in the 1870s.  In La Route de Vétheuil, for example, Monet has reduced the range of his palette mainly to blues and greens.  Moreover, the rapid, flickering brushstrokes create patterns and rhythms that diminish the illusion of space and emphasize the abstract character of the painted surface.  At the time that Monet painted La Route de Vétheuil, it is clear that he had moved beyond the tenets of the style that had established his reputation and provided the foundations of the first great movement in the history of Modern Art.  Never content to rest on past successes, he embraced new ideas with remarkable tenacity and quickened the pace toward the art of the next century.      

Fig. 1, Claude Monet, Sentier dans les coquelicots, Ile Saint-Martin, 1880, oil on canvas, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Bequest of Julia W. Emmons, 1956

Fig. 2, Claude Monet, La Route de Vétheuil, 1880, oil on canvas, The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.

Fig. 3, Claude Monet, Poplars (printemps), 1891, oil on canvas, Private Collection