Water Lilies. Happy Birthday to one of the greatest Impressionists: Claude Monet.
His paintings, with their soothing scenes, brushstrokes and colours have always been able to calm me down, transport me to an idle world in which the delicate sound of a lake, aided by the soft breeze, echoed in fields of lavender.
“If water derives lucidity from stillness, how much more the faculties of the mind! The mind of the sage, being in repose, becomes the mirror of the universe, the speculum of all creation.” ~ Chuang Tzu [Water Lilies, 1917 - 1919 - Claude Monet]
• Zhuangzi (Chuang-tzu 莊子 “Master Zhuang” late 4th century BC) is the pivotal figure in Classical Philosophical Daoism. The Zhuangzi is a compilation of his and others’ writings at the pinnacle of the philosophically subtle Classical period in China (5th–3rd century BC). The period was marked by humanist and naturalist reflections on normativity shaped by the metaphor of a dào—a social or a natural path. More: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/zhuangzi/
• “One instant, one aspect of nature contains it all,” said Claude Monet, referring to his late masterpieces, the water landscapes that he produced at his home in Giverny between 1897 and his death in 1926. More: https://www.artic.edu/artworks/16568/water-lilies
Courbet’s outsized representation of The Artist’s Studio (1855), subtitled “allégorie réelle déterminant une phase de sept années de ma vie artistique et morale,” served as a mid-career reckoning, a theoretical manifesto and a program for future action. At the center of the work, the artist is seen in the act of painting. Although a conspicuously undraped female model stands beside him, she is not represented in the picture, nor are any of the other characters present in the studio. The painting in progress is, in fact, not figural. For this polemical and confessional grande machine, Courbet define himself not as the painter of somber provincials and rough, vigorous peasants, but as painter of landscapes. Over the next 15 years, landscape painting would account for three quarters of Courbet’s artistic production. Lacking the controversy of his figural works, the landscapes were a great success with collectors, making him a considerable fortune.
His landscapes depict the region of the Franche-Comté around Ornans, his place of birth. Associated with deep geological time, Courbet’s rugged, inhospitable landscapes are beyond aesthetic categories like the sublime and the picturesque. Primordial, enduring, and indifferent, they are the antithesis of the evanescent, refinements of civilization, epitomized by the glittering metropolis. The natives of such a land reflect their environment. Therefore, the array of somber, roughhewn inhabitants of Ornans depicted in the act of Enterrement, resembles the distinctive local cliff formations that Courbet would subsequently paint. His own desire to be to be understood as the artistic manifestation of this radically-primal and vital topography is emphasized by the representation of his own body in The Artist’s Studio, which seems literally to merge and emerge from the landscape he paints.
Courbet’s transition from figural to landscape painting might appear to be a calculated retreat from his early, politicized Realist works to a more collector-friendly, saleable landscapes. The latter, however, continue to engage with the avant-garde obliquely, through their heavy, gritty facture. Laid on like cement with a trowel in places, the heavily-built up surfaces that foreground the materiality of the painted medium are diametrically opposed to the self-effacing finish and sheen of salon painting. That this style was clearly perceived to be “modern” is seen in its appeal to the Impressionist avant-garde: Monet’s Rouen Cathedral series, the winter landscapes of Monet, Sisley, and Pissarro and numerous views of L’ Étretat, are all highly-indebted to Courbet’s landscapes.
Claude Monet (1840-1926) - Peupliers au bord de l’Epte, automne
Oil on canvas. Painted in 1891.
39.75 x 25.9 inches, 101 x 65.7 cm. Estimate: US$30,000,000-50,000,000.
Sold Christie’s, New York, 12 May 2022 for US$36,457,500 incl B.P.
Part of the Anne H. Bass Collection.
Anne Hendricks Bass (1941-2020) was a philanthropist and arts patron and former wife of the Texas oil billionaire Sid Bass. The twelve works in this sale included three Monets, two Rothkos, and a pastel, an oil and a sculpture by Degas. All adorned her 5th Avenue New York apartment. They had a combined estimate of between US$243-361 million. All lots sold for a buyer’s premium-inclusive total of US$363,087,500.
The 136-page catalogue (144.4 MB) is available as a free pdf. Lots of informative text, supporting photos of other works of art, and the collection in situ in her residence. Simply pop the following into a new window:
Claude Monet (1840-1926) - Le Parlement, soleil couchant
Oil on canvas. Painted 1900-03.
32 x 36.25 inches, 81.2 x 92 cm. Estimate: US$40,000,000-60,000,000.
Sold Christie’s, New York, 12 May 2022 for US$75,960,000.
Part of the Anne H. Bass Collection.
Anne Hendricks Bass (1941-2020) was a philanthropist and arts patron and former wife of the Texas oil billionaire Sid Bass. The twelve works in this sale include three Monets, two Rothkos, and a pastel, an oil and a sculpture by Degas. All adorned her 5th Avenue New York apartment. They have a combined estimate of between US$243-361 million. All lots sold for a buyer’s premium-inclusive total of US$363,087,500.
The 136-page catalogue (144.4 MB) is available as a free pdf. Lots of informative text, supporting photos of other works of art, and the collection in situ in her residence. Simply pop the following into a new window:
