Antibes, Vista do Platô Notre-Dame, Antibes, França (Antibes, Vue du Plateau Notre-Dame) - Claude Monet

Antibes, Vista do Platô Notre-Dame, Antibes, França (Antibes, Vue du Plateau Notre-Dame) - Claude Monet
Antibes - França
Coleção privada
OST - 65x92 - 1888

Monet’s dazzling view of the south coast of France, Antibes, vue du plateau Notre-Dame, is one of his most vibrant and brilliantly hued compositions of the 1880s. The azure sky is marked by a few scudding clouds and the landscape below is concocted from a rich palette of pink, turquoise and purple. Monet left Paris for the Côte d'Azur on 12th January 1888, arriving several days later. On the recommendation of Guy de Maupassant he planned to stay at the Chateau de la Pinède, a hotel popular with artists. As was often the case, Monet did not find the company of his fellow guests very congenial and in this instance he found the group of artists who gathered around about the Barbizon painter Henri Harpignies particularly irritating. Monet contented himself by first exploring the area around Antibes, Agay and Trayas to the west, then moving towards Monte Carlo in the east, before finally settling on five or six motifs on which to concentrate, including this view of the brightly shining town of Antibes as seen across the bay.

Transfixed by the brilliance of the light, and occasionally overwhelmed by the challenge of representing it on canvas, Monet had a particularly productive campaign in Antibes, returning to Paris in May with close to forty canvases. Discussing the works Monet painted on the Côte d'Azur, Virginia Spate quotes Baudelaire’s L’invitation au voyage – ‘There is nothing else but grace and measure, richness, quietness, and pleasure’, stating: ‘This is indeed the mood of these paintings, for, in the more constant Mediterranean weather, Monet could afford to concentrate for longer than he could on northern coasts on identifying the pigments with which to create the impression of intensely still coloured light’ (V. Spate, The Colour of Time – Claude Monet, London, 1992, p. 191).

Paul Hayes Tucker has speculated that by travelling throughout France in the 1880s Monet was attempting to decentralise Impressionism which for the most part had been based in Paris. ‘When queried in 1880 about his defection [from the Impressionists], he asserted, "I am still an Impressionist and will always remain one". Unlike some of his former colleagues such as Pissarro, who experimented with the pointillist techniques of the Post-Impressionists, Monet staunchly maintained that belief. Indeed, he put it into practice in an unprecedented way, travelling extensively during the decade to paint some of the most spectacular and varied sites in all of France, from the black, ocean-pounded coast of Belle-Isle on the Atlantic, south of Brittany to the verdant shores of Antibes on the Mediterranean. The places he chose had dramatically different geological formations, weather conditions, lighting effects, and temperature ranges. They also possessed strikingly different moods, mythologies, associations and appeals. These challenging conditions led Monet to write frequently to his friends and family about his difficulties throughout the decade. "It is so difficult, so delicate, so tender [in Antibes]", he told Berthe Morisot in 1888, "particularly for someone like me who is inclined toward tougher subjects'" (P. H. Tucker, Monet in the '90s. The Series Paintings, New Haven & London, 1989, pp. 18-19). The remarkable affinity the painter made between his Impressionist ideals and the brilliant light of the South is testament to Monet’s masterful technique. As Joachim Pissarro observed: ‘The status of Monet's painting in Antibes changed as fast as the weather. One day he would work admirably, "thanks to the eternal and resplendent sun”, and the next a terrible wind would make work impossible. Nevertheless, Monet worked relentlessly.  On 1st February, Monet reported that he had "worked all day without a break: it is definitely so beautiful, but so difficult as well!”’ (J. Pissarro, Monet and the Mediterranean (exhibition catalogue), op. cit., p. 42).

The present work is closely related to the version in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, also entitled Antibes, vue du plateau Notre-Dame (fig. 5). In both canvases the town of Antibes is seen from the slopes of the Garoupe, somewhat further east than the four views of the town seen from the gardens of La Salis (Wildenstein nos. 1167-1170). Discussing the present work, Joachim Pissarro writes: ‘The mountains here are given a prominent position. In Antibes seen from Plateau Notre-Dame [the present work] especially, they dominate every element of the scenery and seem to dictate the chromatic harmonies and contrasts. The purples, blues and pinks of the stone, heightened and offset by each other, echo throughout the canvas: they are reiterated in the deep azurine blue surface of the sea; in a few mauve clouds; in the surface of the ground; and in the quivering blue leaves of the shaded tree. The Boston painting, by comparison, is chromatically much more suffused and discreet’ (J. Pissarro, ibid., p. 132).

Daniel Wildenstein described the settings of these pictures as showing 'the walled town of Antibes with the Bastion of St André, seen from the beach at Ponteil looking northwards. The view is dominated by the belltower of the cathedral and by the tower of the Château Grimaldi. In the foreground is the tip of the Islet, and in the background the Alps which straddle the border between France and Italy’ (D. Wildenstein, op. cit., 1996, p. 438). After several weeks of working in this region, Monet expressed confidence in his work in a letter to Alice Hoschedé written in early February: ‘What I will bring back from here will be pure, gentle sweetness: some white, some pink, and some blue, and all this surrounded by the fairylike air’ (quoted in J. Pissarro, ibid., p. 44). For the artist whose entire career was dedicated to exploring the quality of light and its effect on water, the rich, saturated colours of the Mediterranean provided an ideal environment in which to paint, and resulted in a remarkable series of works unique within Monet’s œuvre.

The achievements Monet had made with these works were immediately appreciated by his admirers when they were first exhibited shortly after Monet's return to Paris. Not averse to creating rivalry between the dealers who were interested in the development of his career, Monet released ten Antibes paintings to Theo van Gogh who helped Boussod & Valadon to exhibit them in June and July 1888, rather than consigning them to his more regular dealer Charles Durand-Ruel. Writing about the show, Gustave Geffroy noted the startling colouration the works possessed, ‘Changing colours of the sea, green, blue, grey, almost white – vastness of the rainbow-coloured mountains – with colours, clouded, snow-covered – pale silver foliage of the olive trees, black greenery of the pines, blinding red of the earth – silhouette of the dewy golden town, permeated by light’ (quoted in V. Spate, ibid., p. 193). Antibes, vue du plateau Notre-Dame subsequently became part of a number of distinguished collections, including that of Thomas Lincoln Manson, a friend of John Singer Sargent, and the Ferry family in America, before being acquired by the late owner in 1996.