克勞德·莫內

藝術家身後
米榭·莫內，吉維尼（家族傳承自上述來源）
維登斯坦畫廊，倫敦（1952年或之前購入）
亨利克·努德馬克，瑞典（約1954年或之前購入）
拍賣：蘇黎世科勒畫廊，1979年5月25-26日，拍品編號5180
拍賣；紐約佳士得，1979年11月6日，拍品編號16
購自上述拍賣

斯德哥爾摩，利耶瓦爾克美術館，〈從塞尚到畢加索：瑞典收藏法國藝術〉，1954年，品號268（畫名《風景，法蘭西島大區》）

波爾多，美術館，〈瑞典收藏法國藝術：致敬亞歷山大·羅斯林及阿道夫·烏爾克里·韋特米勒〉，1967年，品號53，圖錄載圖（畫名《維圖伊》）

艾歷克·紐頓，〈法國畫家VIII－克勞德·莫內〉，《阿波羅》，倫敦，1952年12月，圖11，195頁載圖（畫名《維圖伊》）

丹尼爾·維登斯坦，《克勞德·莫內生平與專題目錄》，洛桑及巴黎，1979年，第II冊，品號1058，187頁載圖

丹尼爾·維登斯坦，《莫內專題目錄》，科隆，1996年，第III冊，品號1058，400頁載圖

In Inondation à Giverny Monet has created a vibrant landscape that pulses with dynamism. With the patchwork of colors that makes up the rolling hills of the landscape in the distance, coupled with the expansive stretch of water that carries the fragmented reflections of Giverny’s church and neighboring houses on its mirror-like surface, Monet has captured the effects of the natural light as it illuminated the region, and the atmospheric quality of the landscape as a whole, with remarkable results.

The rural town of Giverny rests against the hills on the east bank of the Seine, where the valley broadens and offers extraordinary vistas of the sprawling rural landscape. Having moved to the small town in 1883, Monet found endless inspiration in the hills overlooking the village, the roads and field near his home, along the banks of the Seine and ultimately amidst the vast landscaping project in his extensive flower gardens. Each location would become the subjects of his best-known works, such as Les Meules à Giverny, Les Peupliers, Matinée sur la Seine and Nymphéas. During a period of heavy rain in the early spring of 1886, the meadows next to Monet’s property flooded with overflow from the nearby river. As a chronicler of the village and surrounding landscape Monet clambered to higher ground to capture the event in the present work, Inondation à Giverny. By capturing the stilled movements of the ripples atop the transient floodwaters, which at any moment might recede, Monet has instilled Inondation à Giverny with a sense of heightened intensity, while the picturesque town is bathed in a soft light as the clouds withdraw, simultaneously supplying a sense of momentary stillness. The vitality with which Monet has applied his brushstrokes, and the subtle tonal shifts used by the painter allow him to capture the rippling reflections of the hills, the grassy banks of the river and the gnarled trees in the water with a great immediacy that epitomizes the Impressionist desire to render the characteristics of light as it changes the appearance of nature. A primary goal of the Impressionist painters was to capture fleeting visual effects of the natural world; the transitory nature of the deluge and the rapidly altered landscape was one that fascinated a number of the Impressionist artists and would feature in the works of Pissarro and Sisley in the 1870s and reappear in the work of Monet in late 1896, when the countryside near Giverny was once again transformed by the neighboring river.

The composition of the present work seems to recall Monet’s series paintings depicting the small medieval village of Vétheuil where the artist and his family lived in from 1878-1881, affording him an extended period to paint the backdrops of rural France. Monet's many paintings from Vétheuil both during this time and upon his return in the late 90s are evidence of a critical development in the evolution of his style, when he began to strike out from the already established techniques of the early Impressionist imagery that he had perfected while living in Argenteuil in the 1870s. The Vétheuil series is representative of the ways in which Monet successfully integrated his vision of landscape painting with the village motif, personalizing this by focusing most pressingly on capturing the vagaries of natural light. As John House explained: “He gradually moved away from a concern with the individual elements in the scene, and the relationships between them, to concentrate on its overall effect; whereas his earlier technique served to differentiate particular elements, later their specificity became absorbed into a closely integrated whole” (J. House, Monet: Nature into Art, New Haven & London, 1986, p. 15).

Many of these canvases strike a balance between the naturalist-realist origins of Impressionism and a boldly experimental approach to capturing the changing qualities of light. This small stretch of the Seine that contains both Givery and Vétheuil provided innumerable opportunities for Monet to observe the same, or similar, views in different seasons and at different times of day and to explore the resulting nuances of light and color. The artist’s fascination with exploring the ever-changing nature of a given motif resulted in the series paintings, which are counted among the most celebrated achievements of the Impressionist movement. Returning to the same vistas over a number of years allowed Monet to observe the landscape in all its moods: capturing it bathed in the crisp, golden light of a warm afternoon or by way of contrast, in the somber, muted tones that he used to evoke the particularly harsh winter of 1879-80. By capturing the passing floodwaters that filled the valley near his home Monet has provided a rare glimpse into a moment otherwise lost in time.