Claude Monet

Galerie Durand-Ruel, Paris (acquired from the artist between 1881 and 1891)

Durand-Ruel Galleries, New York (acquired from the above on May 26, 1897 and until at least 1950

Wildenstein Gallery, New York & Paris

Mrs. Alan Tyser, United Kingdom

Private Collection, Japan

Joan Michelman Paintings, Ltd., New York

Acquired from the above

Paris, 251, rue Saint-Honoré, 7e exposition des artistes indépendants, 1882, no. 67

New York, Durand-Ruel, Monet, 1911, no. 12

Tokyo, Bridgestone Museum of Art; Nagoya, City Art Museum; Hiroshima, Museum of Art, Monet: a Retrospective, 1994, no. 33

Daniel Wildenstein, Claude Monet, biographie et catalogue raisonné, vol. I, Lausanne and Paris, 1974, no. 648, illustrated p. 393
Robert L. Herbert, Monet on the Normandy Coast: Tourism and Painting, 1867-1886, New Haven and London, 1994, no. 41, illustrated p. 40
Daniel Wildenstein, Monet catalogue raisonné, vol. II, Cologne, 1996, no. 648, illustrated p. 246

In good condition. The canvas is relined. Ultra ultra-violet light there are a number of scattered specks of inpainting across the sky however the cliffs and the water appear untouched.
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La Mer vue des falaises belongs to a series of views of the cliff overlooking Fécamp in Normandy, which Monet painted in 1881 (Wildenstein nos. 647-652).  Monet executed the majority of his early seascapes on the coast of Normandy, a region to which he was deeply attached, and to which he returned throughout his career.  In the spring of 1881 Monet spent several weeks in Fécamp, a fishing port he had visited briefly in 1868.  In his depictions of this view, including the present work, Monet eliminated any signs of human presence, choosing instead to focus on the nature itself.  The composition is dominated by the vast expanse of the sea, framed by the dramatic cliffs on the left, and a narrow strip of the sky above the water.

 

Turning to this particular landscape, Monet followed in the footsteps of Gustave Courbet, who had painted some of his best works on the coast of Normandy.  Heather Lemonedes wrote that "The Fécamp pictures should be viewed against the backdrop of Courbet's seascapes, or 'landscapes of the sea,' as he preferred to call them.  Courbet first journeyed to the Normandy coast when he was twenty-one and was immediately captivated by it.  He made numerous return visits in the 1860s, painting the sea and the beach and establishing a reputation as a marine painter.  In 1866 the Count de Choiseul lent Courbet his house at Trouville, where the artist spent time in the company of Monet and Boudin.  One critic described the sea as producing 'the same emotion as love' in Courbet. Such passion [...] would have undoubtedly resonated with Monet. While Monet's depictions of the sea at Fécamp are more abstract, more insistently referential to the act of painting, they evoke a fascination with the subject that was in keeping with Courbet's reverence for the sea" (Heather Lemonedes in Monet in Normandy (exhibition catalogue), Fine Arts Museums, San Francisco, 2006-07, pp. 82-83).