Claude Monet

Durand-Ruel, Paris (acquired from the artist in July, 1891)

Mr. and Mrs. Potter Palmer, Chicago (acquired from the above in 1892)

(possibly) Wildenstein & Co., New York

Charles Weyerhaeuser, Boston

Mitchell-Innes & Nash, New York

Acquired from the above

Paris, Galerie Georges Petit, Monet-Rodin, 1889, no. 68

New York, Wildenstein & Co., Monet, 1945, no.51

Daniel Wildenstein, Monet, Catalogue raisonné, vol. II, Lausanne, 1979, no. 988, illustrated p. 160

Daniel Wildenstein, Monet, Catalogue raisonné, vol. III,  Cologne, 1996, no. 988, illustrated p. 370

The canvas is lined. Apart from a few small spots of retouching in the upper right corner on the extreme left framing edge and two tiny spots of retouching in the sky in the upper left, visible only under UV, this work is in very good condition.
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Poirier en fleurs depicts a pear tree in bloom on a resplendent springtime day that captures the best of plein air painting. The setting is just outside Giverny, the area that would become synonymous with Monet's most innovative compositions. Monet moved with his family to Giverny in April 1883 and remained there for the rest of his life. In the first years after settling in Giverny with his family, Monet spent many of his painting campaigns away from home, traveling to Italy and the south of France and later to Étretat in Normandy. "One always needs a certain amount of time to get familiar with a new landscape," Monet later explained, implying that his time away from Giverny allowed him to recalibrate his new objectives in landscape painting (quoted in Daniel Wildenstein, op. cit., 1996, vol. I, p. 192). By the time he painted the current work in 1885, he had fully embraced the region.

This same motif of the pear tree behind a latticework gate appears in a work painted the previous winter, Maisons de paysans à Giverny, 1884. The winter scene, executed with a muted palette, presented bare trees and tangled brush. When he returns to the scene in the summer, Monet celebrates the explosion of colors in the blossoming pear tree set against a blue sky. In his catalogue raisonné on the artist, Daniel Wildenstein describes the location of this motif: "These houses with their orchards in front of them are located immediately to the east of Le Pressoir where Monet lived. In the foreground is the road from Vernon to Gasny, known as the Chemin du Roy" (Daniel Wildenstein, Monet, Catalogue raisonné, vol. II, Lausanne,1979, p.343).

The 1880s were a pivotal time in Monet's artistic trajectory. He expanded the boundaries of Impressionism, exploring specific scenes across seasonal variations as he does in the present work. This serial mentality would become a mainstay of the Modernist and Post-Modernist movements and its appearance in Monet's oeuvre is significant. By the end of this decade, Monet would embark upon his seminal series which included those focused on poplar trees, haystacks and the cathedral at Rouen.

Poirier en fleurs is distinguished by an explosive use of color that is particular to the period, appearing in such seminal works as Champ de coquelicots, environs de Giverny painted the same year (fig. 2). Andrew Forge has written of Monet's use of color in the 1880s, "Colour which he now learned to use with an unprecedented purity offers an infinitely subtle and flexible alternative to the traditional massing of light and shade.  Systems of interlocking blues and oranges, for example, of lilacs and lemons will carry the eye across the whole surface of the canvas and these colour structures, each marvelously turned to the particulars of light will be augmented by a vast range of accents of comma, slash, dot, flake, each attuned economically to its object that the eye is continually at work in its reading," (A. Forge, Claude Monet (exhibition catalogue), New York, 1976).

This work was acquired from Durand-Ruel by one of the pioneers of impressionist collecting, Potter Palmer of Chicago. Palmer was a tycoon in the retail industry and a vital contributor to the historic landmarks of his city. After the Great Fire of 1871, Palmer was central to the rebuilding effort that would bring world renown to the architectural landscape of Chicago including the development of northern swampland into today's prestigious Lake Shore Drive. He and his wife, Bertha Palmer, amassed a large collection of 19th century paintings and he had a particular love for the works of Monet.  They quickly became one of Durand-Ruel's most important American clients. In 1892, the Palmers acquired an astounding twenty-one paintings by Monet, including the present work, presumably in anticipation of the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago. The couple filled the main gallery of their neo-Gothic residence with works now considered icons of Impressionism (fig. 3). As one of the first great collections of Impressionist art in the United States, the Potter Palmer collection revealed unbridled foresight and refined taste.