Claude MONET, 1840-1926 Etretat, Gate and Cliff... Lot 17

Claude MONET, 1840-1926 Etretat, Gate and Cliff of Downstream, 1864 oil on canvas (some minor restorations), unsigned 28 x 50 cm. ATTENTION: PRIOR REGISTRATION REQUIRED TO BID ON THIS LOT BIBLIOGRAPHY Daniel Wildenstein, Claude Monet, catalog raisonné, Tome V, supplement, Editions Wildenstein Institute, Lausanne, 1991, described and reproduced under n°1986-22 ter, p.3 Daniel Wildenstein, Claude Monet, catalog raisonné, Editions Taschen, 1996, volume II, described under n°22b p.16, reproduced p.17 FORMER PROVENANCE Collection Baron Denys Cochin, Paris Private collection, Belgium, 1989 SALES Christie's, London, June 27, 1994, n°3 Drouot, Paris, June 21, 1995, n°81 Sale Me Briest, Drouot Montaigne, Paris, December 4, 1998, n°5 Born in 1840 in Paris, Claude Monet spent his childhood in Le Havre and very quickly showed a talent for drawing. The caricatures he sold to earn a living were noticed by Eugène Boudin who encouraged him to paint, to study in Paris and who introduced him to painting on the spot: "If I became a painter it is thanks to Boudin. It is with some of his friends like Pissarro, Jongkind, Manet, Sisley or Courbet that he painted in Etretat. This letter of 1864 to his friend the painter Bazille announces the series that the artist will make between 1883 and 1886: Here my dear, it is adorable and I discover every day more beautiful things. It is to become crazy so much I want to do everything, my head is bursting Etretat, once a traditional fishing port, then a seaside resort popular with painters, writers and famous people from the 19th century, owes its fame to its cliffs sculpted by the sea. Composed of layers of limestone and flint, they have been eroded to form caves, doors or needles, sources of inspiration for painters. Only three paintings from this period are known out of the almost 80 paintings dealing with this theme that the artist later tackled between 1883 and 1886. The cliff, the sea and the sky are the main actors of this painting on which the light pierces the clouds. According to Gustave Geffroy, this is where he took the colors of the ir, the secret of the fogs. It is not fidelity to reality that fascinates Monet but the play of light. It is nature that prevails despite the presence of some characters suggested on the beach. And the painter in front of the subject, waited, watched, the sun, the shades, picked up in some strokes of brush the ray which falls or the cloud which passes, and, disdainful of the false and the agreed, posed them on his canvas with speed Maupassant, The Life of a Landscape Artist (Etretat, September), Gil Blas, September 28, 1886.