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Breakwater at Trouville, Low Tide Claude Monet

Artist

Claude Monet Paris 1840 – 1926 Giverny

Culture French
Date 1870
Object type painting
Medium, technique oil on canvas
Dimensions

54 x 65.7 cm

Inventory number 367.B
Collection Department of Art after 1800
On view Hungarian National Gallery Building D, First Floor, From Delacroix to Vasarely – Highlights from the Collection of International Art after 1800, Baroque Hall

In June 1870, Monet spent his honeymoon in Trouville, on the Normandy coast. Trouville was one of the most fashionable seaside resorts of the day. In many works, Monet recorded the interesting new phenomena of early tourism. In the early impressionist painting held in Budapest, though, there is not a single trace of the bustling busy beaches, nor even of the events going on in the Franco-Prussian War, which was being fought at the time: as the river Touques flows into the sea, there is nothing to disturb the peace of the fishing figures. The restrained tones, the pictorial structure built up of strong diagonals and independant fields of colour, and the slightly overhead perspective, all recall the world of Japanese woodblock prints. The apparently random composition is in fact designed with meticulous care: the mass of the breakwater that seals the left-hand edge of the painting is countered on the right, where the dark band stretching along the line of the horizon marks the invisible boundary between the river and the sea. His sensitive portrayal of the cloudy sky, which seems to merge almost with the sea, reveals a direct observations of atmospheric effects. The sails reflected in the water are also handled with Monet’s rapid and light brushstrokes: the bright, refreshing patch of the pink sail in truth is what brings the picture to life.

References

Genthon, István, Modern francia festmények: Szépművészeti Múzeum Budapest, Remekművek magyarországi gyűjteményekből/Meisterwerke aus ungarischen Sammlungen/Art treasures in Hungarian collections/Chefs d’oeuvre dans les collections hongroises, Corvina, Budapest, 1972, p. 30.

Illyés, Mária, Verő, Mária (ed.), XIX. századi francia művek, A Szépművészeti Múzeum gyűjteményei/The Collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest 4, Szépművészeti Múzeum, Budapest, 2001, p. 90-91.

Treasures from Budapest : European and Hungarian masterpieces from the Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest and the Hungarian National Gallery: Japan-Hungary friendship 150th anniversary: Exhibition at the National Arts Centre, Tokyo, on the 150th anniversary of the Japanese-Hungarian friendship 2019.12.04 – 2020.03.16., Nikkei Inc, Tokyo, 2019.

This record is subject to revision due to ongoing research.

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