Estimated Price:

   £   

Realised Price:

   £   

What is this symbol? This symbol indicates that this auction hose has verified this price result.

Log in or subscribe to view price data

CLAUDE MONET
1840-1926
LE PARLEMENT, SOLEIL COUCHANT
Signed and dated 1902
Oil on canvas
32 1/8 by 36 5/8 in. 81.6 by 93 cm.
Provenance
Durand-Ruel, Paris (acquired from the artist on May 11, 1904)
Pieter van de Velde, Le Havre (acquired from the above on May 19, 1904)
Marc FranAois, Paris (acquired from the above in 1922 and sold: Hotel Drouot, Paris, March 20, 1935, lot 5)
Monsieur Reaubourg, Paris (acquired at the above sale through AndrE Schoeller)
Sale: Hotel Drouot, Paris, June 16, 1950, lot 30
(possibly) Pellerin, Paris
Galerie de l'ElysEe (Alex Maguy), Paris
George N. Richard, New York (1968)
Mrs. Bernice Richard, New York (sold: Christie's, New York, The Mr. and Mrs. George N. Richard Collection, November 14, 1989, lot 29)
Private Collection, Japan
Acquired from the above
Exhibited
Paris, Galeries Durand-Ruel, Claude Monet, Vues de la Tamise 1/2 Londres, 1902-1904, 1904, no. 27
New York, Acquavella Galleries, Inc., Claude Monet, For the Benefit of the New York Hospital, 1976, no. 59
Tokyo, Tokyu Art Gallery Shibuya, Monet, Renoir, Bonnard, 1979, no. 13
New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art (on extended loan, 1980-87)
Tokyo, Bridgestone Museum of Art; Nagoya City Art Museum; Hiroshima Museum of Art, Monet: A Retrospective, 1994, no. 69
London, Royal Academy of Arts, Monet in the 20th Century, 1998, no. 20a (not shown in Boston)
Literature
R. de Bettex, "Echos de partout. Claude Monet," La REpublique FranAaise, Paris, May 10, 1904
R.M. Ferry, "Notes d'art. La Tamise par M. Claude Monet," La LibertE, Paris, May 18, 1904, discussed p. 3
Gustave Kahn, "L'exposition Claude Monet,"Gazette des Beaux-Arts, Paris, July 1, 1904, illustrated as an etching
p. 84
Lionello Venturi, Les archives de l'Impressionnisme, vol. I, Paris and New York, 1939, discussed pp. 393-394
Oscar Reutersward, Claude Monet, Stockholm, 1948, fig. 116, illustrated
p. 244
Rodolphe Walter, "Pieter van de Velde, un amateur EclairE," Gazette des Beaux-Arts, Paris, October 1968, illustrated
p. 203
Grace Seiberling, Monet's Series, New York and London, 1981, no. 40, catalogued p. 375
Daniel Wildenstein, Claude Monet, Biographie et catalogue raisonnE, vol. IV, Lausanne and Paris, 1985, no. 1603, illustrated p. 187 (as dating from circa 1900-01); p. 365, discussed in letters nos. 1723 and 1724; p. 427, discussed in letters nos. 165 and 166
Grace Seiberling, Monet in London (exhibition catalogue), High Museum of Art, Atlanta, 1988-89, no. 27, listed p. 93
Daniel Wildenstein, Claude Monet, Biographie et catalogue raisonnE, vol. V, Lausanne and Paris, 1991, no. 1603, catalogued p. 52
Paul Hayes Tucker, Claude Monet, Life and Art, New Haven and London, 1995, fig. 198, illustrated p. 173 (as dating from circa 1900-01)
Daniel Wildenstein, Monet, Catalogue RaisonnE, vol. IV, Cologne, 1996, no. 1603, illustrated pp. 711-12 (as dating from circa1900-01)
Monet first visited London in 1870-71, and during this time he painted a view of the Thames river, looking towards Westminster Bridge and the Houses of Parliament (see fig. 1). Though this early painting differs markedly from the celebrated series of views of the Thames river he painted between 1899 and 1904, the soft tonal and blurred effects he created with a palette of pale blues and yellows suggest a deep interest in London and its atmospheric qualities. The English capital, with its famous winter fogs and smogs that naturalized the industrial urban landscape, had previously influenced many artists, and inspired Monet to cross the Channel with his paints and brushes in September 1899: "The choice of London was certainly in part inspired by the extraordinary light effects that the city offered during the winter months, when sunshine was diffused through a dense atmosphere of mist mingled with coal smoke from domestic fires and industrial furnaces. These had informed the latter work of J.M.W. Turner, and James McNeill Whistler's views of Battersea and Chelsea made in the 1860s and 1870s (see fig. 2)... Whistler's Thames views may have encouraged Monet's choice of the Thames views, although their expanse of sky and water allowed Monet to investigate the inversion of compositional elements - bridge, chimney, stack, smoke, sun - already explored in his 1890s series, the Poplars on the Epte (exhibited 1892) and Mornings on the Seine (1898)" (Monet in the 20th Century (exhibition catalogue), Royal Academy of Arts, London; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1998, p. 128).
Monet began the 'London' series that would preoccupy him until 1904 during an initial six-week stay. The artist took up residence in the fashionable Savoy Hotel, on the Victoria Embankment, which afforded spectacular views of the Thames and south London. He went back to the same hotel on two successive trips - February to March 1900 and January to March 1901 - and he is reported to have followed the same painting routine throughout his different visits; Waterloo Bridge in the early morning, with the rising sun behind it. As he followed the course of the sun, he looked towards Charing Cross Bridge, which he painted midday and afternoon. Later, Monet would leave the Savoy Hotel for St. Thomas' Hospital in the afternoon and early evening, from which he painted the series of the Houses of Parliament at sunset (see fig. 3).
This latter group is the most unified of the London series, and perhaps the one with which Monet was most satisfied. In the 1904 exhibition at Durand-Ruel, where the London paintings were finally shown to the public for the first time, Monet exhibited eleven of the nineteen identified Houses of Parliament canvases, and asked a higher price for them than for the views of Charing Cross and Waterloo Bridges. No sketchy versions of the Houses of Parliament have survived, unlike the other subjects: and unlike views of the bridges, the Parliament paintings are all the same size, depicting late afternoon and sunset effects. The massive, neo-Gothic Westminster building is flattened to a pattern of towers and pinnacles, sometimes doubled in reflection, and though the amount of the building shown varies from painting to painting, it dominates each picture.
According to Wildenstein, Monet began to paint the Houses of Parliament later than the other two series, on February 13, 1900. The first group of seven canvases shows Westminster at its greatest width, including the Central Spire at the right of the composition. In the present work and four other closely related canvases (Wildenstein nos. 1604-07), the Central Spire is elided in favor of the expanse of water and buildings on the Embankment to the left. The famed London fog seems less pervasive in this work, and both Westminster and its reflection are rendered with a solidity and monumentality lacking in other works from the series. Here Monet heightened the sculptural quality of the architectural elements with a palette of blues and greens, vigorously applied on the canvas with a grid of vertical and horizontal brushstrokes and anchored to the picture plane with touches of darker blue. The backlit mass of the Houses of Parliament is counterpointed by swirling, vivid reds, yellows, oranges and purples, thickly applied, that capture the light of the setting sun in the sky and the water. Monet, speaking to an interviewer in 1901, commented on colors in the London fog so powerfully rendered in this composition: " 'The fog in London assumes all sorts of colors; there are black, brown, yellow, green, purple fogs, and the interest in painting is to get the objects as seen through all these fogs. My practiced eye has found that objects change in appearance in a London fog, more and quicker than in any other atmosphere, and the difficulty is to get every change on canvas' " (quoted in Grace Seiberling, Monet in London (exhibition catalogue), High Museum of Art, Atlanta, 1988-89, p. 62).
Discussing the Houses of Parliament canvases and Monet's painting technique Grace Seiberling wrote: "The paintings of the Houses of Parliament... more than the views of the bridges, create a sequence of evocative atmospheric effects. Monet developed gradations in density between very foggy views... Shifts in tonality, between these and those in which pinks and yellows play a more important part, were another variation and a way of integrating these paintings with sunset views where the sun shone through the clouds and oranges became more significant. In all of these paintings the artist was trying to represent something translucent with opaque paints. The layered surfaces that he had been developing helped him to achieve this task, for they allowed one color to show through another, without assuming an identity as a shape. The blended and layered colors suggested the instability and ambiguity of fog. But it was not only effects of light and atmosphere that Monet was trying to achieve. In the early 1890s he had told Robinson that he was interested in 'mystery.' His technique allowed him to conjure up a scene in an open-ended and evocative way" (ibid., p. 84).
After his three visits to London, Monet returned to Giverny with scores of canvases, none of which he considered finished. For the next three years, he continued to work on the pictures, and in 1903 he wrote to Durand-Ruel: "I cannot send you a single canvas of London, because, for the work I am doing, it is indispensable to have all of them before my eyes, and to tell the truth not a single one is definitely finished. I work them all out together or at least a certain number, and I don't yet know how many of them I will be able to show because what I do there is extremely delicate. One day I am satisfied, and the next everything looks bad to me, but anyway there are always several good ones" (ibid., p. 72).
In 1904, Monet finally allowed his dealer Durand-Ruel to exhibit 37 views of the Thames, which included the present work as no. 27. In the catalogue essay prepared for the show Octave Mirbeau called the series "a miracle. It's almost a paradox that one can, with impasto on canvas, create an impalpable matter, imprison the sun... to make shoot forth from this Empyrean atmposphere, such splendid fairy lands of light. And yet, it's not a miracle, it's not a paradox: it's the logical outcome of the art of M. Claude Monet" (ibid., p. 96). Critics and collectors agreed with this assessment, and Ars 3/16ne Alexandre wrote: "This goes further than painting. It's an enchantment of atmosphere and light. London appeared fantastic in its fogs of dream, colored by the magic of the sun" (ibid., p. 82). Buyers at the Durand-Ruel exhibition included major museums as well as some of the greatest impressionist collectors of the time, such as Sergei Schuckhin and Louisine and Henry Osborne Havermeyer.
Of the 19 identified Houses of Parliament paintings, fourteen are in public institutions: The Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York (W 1597); National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. (W 1598); The Art Institute of Chicago (W 1600); High Museum of Art, Atlanta (W 1601); Kaiser Wilhelm Museum, Krefeld (W 1602); MusEe des Beaux-Arts, Lille (W 1605); MusEe Marmottan, Paris (W 1606); Kunsthaus, Zurich (W 1607); MusEe des Beaux-Arts, Le Havre (W 1608); The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (W 1609); MusEe d'Orsay, Paris (W 1610); Museum of Fine Arts, Saint-Petersburg, Florida (W 1611); Art Museum, Princeton University, New Jersey (W 1612); Pushkin Museum, Moscow (W 1613).