Price:$166.00

Price:$166.00

Price:$166.00

Price:$166.00

Price:$166.00

Price:$166.00

Rue Montorgueil by Claude Monet could have almost been painted by one of the Fauves, Vlaminck or Derain. It does not, as once thought, commemorate the first 14 July celebrations, but the International Exhibition of 30 June 1878, symbol of the renaissance of France after the defeat of 1870.

Monet was staying in Paris at the time and was struck by the mood of rejoicing in the flag-hung streets. His colleague Manet chose to stay in the elegant seventeenth arrondissement, where he painted Rue Mosnier Decked Out With Flags, but Monet went to the working class area of Les Halles, and stationed himself on a balcony which afforded a prospect of the rue Montorgueil aflutter with tricolours. As he told Rene Gimpel, he had simply asked the tenant’s permission to set up his easel. It is highly probable that he painted the companion picture Rue Saint-Denis Decked Out with Flags on the same day. The two pictures are similar in style, with rapid, energetic brushwork.

La Rue Montorgueil passed through many hands and was much in demand by collectors. Shown for the first time at the forth Impressionist exhibition, in 1879, it was bought initially by Dr de Bellio and then passed to the collection of the Prince de Wagram, a young officer descended from Marechal Berthier, whose taste for avant-garde art appalled his family. When he was killed in the last days of the 1914-18 War, his heirs lost no time in selling off the paintings, and today these form the nucleus of one of the great French collections. This particular painting, La Rue Montorgueil, was bought by the playwright Alfred Savoir.

Its companion piece enjoyed equal success. It was snapped up by Ernest Hoschede against considerable competition, and later came into the hands of the composer Emmanuel Chabrier, who had the happy notion of using the inheritance left by his wife to build up a collection of modern painting. In this way the man best known for writing Espana became the proud owner of Manet’s The Bar at the Folies-Bergere, three Renoirs, six Monets, two Sisleys and a Cezanne!

Price:$166.00

Price:$166.00

Price:$166.00

Price:$166.00

Price:$166.00

Price:$166.00

Haystacks by Claude Monet. The series of 25 Monet Haystacks canvases was completed by the end of the winter of 1891. Some 15 of these were exhibited by Durand-Ruel in May. For the first time there was no hostile reaction, only unanimous praise. Gustave Geffory’s preface to the exhibition catalogue is a string of hyperboles, but it also contains a sensitive account of these ‘haystacks in an empty field’.

With the Monet Haystacks series, started in the late summer of 1890 and completed the following spring, Monet entered on a new period in his work. For the next thirty years he was able to concentrate almost exclusively on a few subjects: Haystacks, Poplars, Rouen Cathedral, the Houses of Parliament, the Waterlilies. What interested him henceforth was the expression of transient appearances – the motif itself would be unvarying and viewed always from the same angle, only the light would change, depending on the season, the weather and the time of day.

Price:$166.00

Price:$166.00

Price:$166.00

Price:$166.00

Price:$166.00

Price:$166.00

Price:$166.00

Price:$166.00

Price:$166.00

Price:$166.00

Price:$166.00

Price:$166.00

Impression, Sunrise (Impression, soleil levant) is a painting by Claude Monet, for which the Impressionist movement was named.

Dated 1872, but probably created in 1873, its subject is the harbour of Le Havre in France, using very loose brush strokes that suggest rather than delineate it. Monet explained the title later:

“ Landscape is nothing but an impression, and an instantaneous one, hence this label that was given us, by the way because of me. I had sent a thing done in Le Havre, from my window, sun in the mist and a few masts of boats sticking up in the foreground....They asked me for a title for the catalogue, it couldn't really be taken for a view of Le Havre, and I said: 'Put Impression.' ”

It was displayed in 1874 during the first independent art show of the Impressionists (who were not yet known by that name). Critic Louis Leroy, inspired by the painting's name, titled his hostile review of the show in Le Charivari newspaper, "The Exhibition of the Impressionists", thus inadvertently naming the new art movement. He wrote:

“Impression - I was certain of it. I was just telling myself that, since I was impressed, there had to be some impression in it … and what freedom, what ease of workmanship! Wallpaper in its embryonic state is more finished than that seascape.”

The painting was stolen from the Musée Marmottan Monet in 1985 and recovered in 1990. Since 1991 it has been back on display in the museum.

Digitally desaturated version of the painting--note how the Sun and its reflection on the water are virtually invisible here.

Monet painted the sun as having almost exactly the same luminance as that of the sky, a condition which suggests high humidity and atmospheric attenuation of light. This detail relies on the use of complementary colours and variety of colour temperature, rather than changes in color intensity or contrast of values, to differentiate the sun from the surrounding sky.

Price:$166.00

Price:$166.00

Price:$166.00

Price:$166.00

Price:$166.00

Price:$166.00

Price:$166.00

Price:$166.00

Price:$166.00

Price:$166.00

Price:$166.00

Price:$166.00

Price:$166.00

Price:$166.00

Price:$166.00

Price:$166.00

Price:$166.00