GENERAL DESCRIPTION
Claude Monet's The Seine at Lavacourt (1880) is a large-scale painting of powerful luminosity. This is a harmonious composition of broad horizontal bands of sky and water separated by a narrow strip of riverbank consisting of clusters of trees and the houses of Lavacourt. Monet's vantage point was from the other side of the Seine, at the village of Vetheuil, where he had moved in 1878. He lived in Vetheuil for three years, a brief but turbulent period in his life and career. This painting is one of two landscapes that Monet submitted to the official juried Salon in 1880. He sought exhibition and marketing alternatives to what he saw as lackluster performances at the impressionist group exhibitions. Only one painting—The Seine at Lavacourt—was accepted, and it seems to have been somewhat tainted by this official success. Monet did describe this work as "something more discreet, more bourgeois," as though attempting to answer criticism of the lack of finish in his other paintings. [1]
The Seine at Lavacourt was presented to the Dallas Art Association on November 14, 1937, by trustees of the Munger Fund, an irrevocable trust set up in 1925 for the purchase of artworks for the Dallas Art Association. The painting was featured at that time in an exhibition at the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts called Master French Impressionists (November 14-December 18, 1937). The early acquisition of an impressionist painting was evidently an audacious anomaly in the Museum's development. Decades later, other important impressionist and post-impressionist works followed.
In 1998 The Seine at Lavacourt was featured in a special exhibition at the Dallas Museum of Art entitled Monet at Vetheuil: The Turning Point. The focused exhibition, organized by the University of Michigan Museum of Art, brought together a number of the most significant works from Monet's sojourn in Vetheuil and provided an important scholarly contribution to our understanding of this beloved artist and of a painting that is unquestionably one of the Museum's greatest treasures.
[1] Robert Boardingham, Impressionist Masterpieces in American Museums (n.p.: Hugh Lauter Levin Associates, 1996), 80.
Adapted from
Dorothy Kosinski, “Claude Monet's The Seine at Lavacourt,” Dallas Museum of Art, 100 Years , ed. Dorothy M. Kosinski (Dallas, TX: Dallas Museum of Art, 2003), Pamphlet number 6.
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WEB RESOURCES
- The National Gallery, London~Check out Lavacourt under Snow by Monet.
- YouTube~Watch this video of Monet painting en plein air, or outdoors, from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
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General Description
Claude Monet's The Seine at Lavacourt (1880) is a large-scale painting of powerful luminosity. This is a harmonious composition of broad horizontal bands of sky and water separated by a narrow strip of riverbank consisting of clusters of trees and the houses of Lavacourt. Monet's vantage point was from the other side of the Seine, at the village of Vetheuil, where he had moved in 1878. He lived in Vetheuil for three years, a brief but turbulent period in his life and career. This painting is one of two landscapes that Monet submitted to the official juried Salon in 1880. He sought exhibition and marketing alternatives to what he saw as lackluster performances at the impressionist group exhibitions. Only one painting—The Seine at Lavacourt—was accepted, and it seems to have been somewhat tainted by this official success. Monet did describe this work as "something more discreet, more bourgeois," as though attempting to answer criticism of the lack of finish in his other paintings. [1]
The Seine at Lavacourt was presented to the Dallas Art Association on November 14, 1937, by trustees of the Munger Fund, an irrevocable trust set up in 1925 for the purchase of artworks for the Dallas Art Association. The painting was featured at that time in an exhibition at the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts called Master French Impressionists (November 14-December 18, 1937). The early acquisition of an impressionist painting was evidently an audacious anomaly in the Museum's development. Decades later, other important impressionist and post-impressionist works followed.
In 1998 The Seine at Lavacourt was featured in a special exhibition at the Dallas Museum of Art entitled Monet at Vetheuil: The Turning Point. The focused exhibition, organized by the University of Michigan Museum of Art, brought together a number of the most significant works from Monet's sojourn in Vetheuil and provided an important scholarly contribution to our understanding of this beloved artist and of a painting that is unquestionably one of the Museum's greatest treasures.
[1] Robert Boardingham, Impressionist Masterpieces in American Museums (n.p.: Hugh Lauter Levin Associates, 1996), 80.
Adapted from
Dorothy Kosinski, “Claude Monet's The Seine at Lavacourt,” Dallas Museum of Art, 100 Years , ed. Dorothy M. Kosinski (Dallas, TX: Dallas Museum of Art, 2003), Pamphlet number 6.
Fun Facts
Archival Resources
(digitized/non-digitized)
Web Resources
- The National Gallery, London~Check out Lavacourt under Snow by Monet.
- YouTube~Watch this video of Monet painting en plein air, or outdoors, from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
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