11/06/2023
I love a good oil painting. Don't you?
"The Artist's Garden at Vétheuil", 1881 Mia Feigelson Gallery
By Claude Monet (French, 1840-1926)
oil on canvas; 100 x 80 cm (39.4 x 31.6 in.)
Private Collection
Sitters:
Jean-Pierre Hoschedé, Alice Hoschedé's youngest child (1877-1961) | Alice Hoschedé would later become Monet's wife
Michel Monet, Claude Monet's younger son (1878-1966)
Context:
"In September 1878, Claude Monet took up residence at Vétheuil, a village northwest of Paris. Although this period was marked by personal loss and financial hardship, it was also one of intense productivity. Over the course of the three years he spent there, Monet executed nearly three hundred paintings, and his art shifted away from scenes of modern life toward a more focused exploration of landscape and atmospheric effects.
In the summer of 1881, Monet began work on a group of four closely related canvases showing a private garden bursting with sunflowers. Of the four paintings, the work now in the Norton Simon collection (see the painting https://bit.ly/2RXoAD3 ) is closest in palette and composition to the one in Washington (see the painting https://bit.ly/3i2atan), and they share distinct elements absent from the other two works, such as the clouds and the placement of shadows in the foreground.
The Norton Simon canvas has long been thought to have been the model for the larger, more detailed Washington picture, but recent examinations have called this theory into question. At some later date, Monet repainted the foreground of the Washington painting, at which point he mistakenly added the erroneous date of 1880, further confusing the works’ chronology.
The other two paintings are in Private Collection (including the present canvas)" — Find out more https://bit.ly/3i29ln0 | Source: the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
