Monet, Claude (1840-1926)
La berge de la Seine (The banks of the Seine)
1880
Oil on canvas, 60 x 73 cm
Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Buenos Aires
At the session of November 17, 1910, the members of the Deliberative Council of the City of Buenos Aires had voted on a project that highlighted the role of the Municipality in promoting artistic culture, one of the ways could be the donation of works of art. This resolution benefited the MNBA, which had a state budget to increase its assets with acquisitions of works that the National Commission of Fine Arts made at the “International Art Exhibition of the Centennial of Buenos Aires 1910.” The occasion was propitious for the purchase of paintings by the Spaniard Anglada Camarasa, the Frenchman Claude Monet, the Belgian Franz Courtens and the Italian Pietro Chiesa, among other authors.
In this exhibition space, the French government’s shipment included 498 works, including paintings, sculptures, engravings, decorative art objects and photographs of architectural works.
Augusto Gozalbo, a critic for the magazine Athinae, wrote about Monet’s works in the French section: “[…] Two works by Claude Monet stand out for the simplicity of their technique. Indeed, the technique is so simple and sincere that it disappears before the result obtained […] We must necessarily think of Impressionism when faced with these two paintings, because the admirable chromatic harmony, the soft and vaporous luminosity of the calm afternoon, the curvature of the sky, have been obtained with the Impressionist technique. The cursed, persecuted, mocked technique, against which, as against the masters who have maintained it until imposing it, the academics and the impotent have barked.”
On January 27, 1911, towards the end of the exhibition, the Municipality of the City of Buenos Aires, through the National Commission of Fine Arts, finalized the purchase of one of the two works by the French painter presented at the Centennial Exhibition: La berge de la Seine to donate it to the National Museum of Fine Arts.
According to the catalogue raisonné by the French specialist Daniel Leopold Wildenstein published in 1974, the work is mentioned as La berge de la Seine. This text also refers to André Anzon Baron de Caccamisi as its first owner. Caccamisi and his wife, the opera singer Blanche Marchesi, were friends and clients of the French gallery owner Paul Durand-Ruel. The dealer was a fundamental figure in the growth of the Impressionist artists and the insertion of their works in the art market. He had supported the work of these painters by organizing exhibitions, paying them a monthly fee in exchange for their production, and acquiring their paintings to make them known in Europe and America.
Durand-Ruel purchased the painting from Caccamisi on February 2 1910. A few months later, it was exhibited in Buenos Aires as part of the shipment made by the French government for the International Centennial Exhibition, which opened on July 2.
La Berge de la Seine bears the signature of Claude Monet although it is not dated. However, Wildenstein includes it – under the number 615 – in the corpus of paintings from 1880.
La Berge de la Seine presents the landscape of one of the branches of the river, at the southern end of Lavacourt, according to Wildenstein. Lavacourt was a village that was opposite Vétheuil across the Seine. Monet lived in Vétheuil from October 1878 to November 1881. There he devoted himself to painting the banks of the river at different times of the year and from different points of view, as in Maisons à Lavacourt, La berge de la Seine or View of Vetheuil in summer, from 1880.
The French impressionist used a boat-workshop to navigate the river and go out to paint in the open air, plein air. He studied light and optical effects, leaving drawing aside and turning to the use of quick stains to define forms, with short juxtaposed brushstrokes of pure and complementary colours in works completed instantly. Water was one of the favourite motifs for the study of transparencies, reflections and movement. (Patricia Corsani | MNBA)