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Lot Essay
On 7 April 1891, the art dealer Desmond Fitzgerald sent the following excited telegram to his close friend John Nicholas Brown: 'The most superb Monet just arrived. You and your mother will admire. I have the refusal until tomorrow noon. Fifteen hundred. I beg you to say yes. You will never regret it. Answer yes or no tonight if possible'. Later the same day Fitzgerald sent a handwritten note by mail saying: 'My dear John, I went to telegraph office at 8 just as it was to close and your telegram came as I arrived. The picture can be sold to other parties if you decide not to keep it, but it is of surpassing loveliness and of the very best quality - signed and dated 1890. It is of the same size as my Autumn scene in the library - a little larger than the Antibes picture which you saw at my home. It is at Chase's and came from Paris this p.m. No one but a few of us have seen it. As I must get up at 6 tomorrow morning and go to Arnold Mills at 8-30 and Pantucket I may not see you so send this hurried line. It is the most complete picture that I have ever seen of Monet's and a masterpiece. It is a poppy and wheat field with trees something like the one you and H liked but far far superior in every way. You had better come down and see it at once - [Fitzgerald then incorporates a rough sketch of the picture in his letter] - but it is impossible to give an idea of the delicacy and beauty. It is a warm hazy day in midsummer. Affectionately, D', with a footnote added: 'It is a fine composition as well as a fine picture. I think it the best I have ever seen. It will be worth $10,000 some day.'
John Nicholas Brown (fig. 1) purchased Champ d'Avoine on the basis of this strong recommendation and hung the picture alongside works by other major Impressionists such as Sisley, Pissarro and Cézanne which he already owned. By extraordinary coincidence, Cézanne's watercolour Le bassin du Jas de Bouffan (lot 14 in the present sale) was in the same distinguished collection.
Shortly after acquiring the picture, in 1892, Brown lent it to the Saint Botolph Club in Boston, where regular exhibitions of Impressionism were held at the time. It was shown twice in Monet shows in 1892 and 1899. More recently Champ d'avoine was exhibited in the pivotal 1990 exhibition entitled Monet in the '90s. The Series Paintings, organised by the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston which later travelled to the Art Institute of Chicago and the Royal Academy of Art in London. Throughout this impressive exhibition history, including a period of loan at the Baltimore Museum of Art, Champ d'avoine has never left the collection for which it was originally bought in 1891.
As P. Hayes Tucker has pointed out (op. cit., 1989, pp. 69-113), Monet's involvement with rural subjects began with the two experimental series of 1888 and 1889, the first series of Meules à Giverny (W.1213 to W.1217a) and the Ravins de la Creuse (W.1218 to W.1227 and W.1230 to W.1233). Then in 1890 began a decade dedicated to the almost exclusive depiction - and intentional celebration - of the pastoral surroundings of Giverny. In fact, with the exception of his views of Rouen Cathedral, Mount Kolsaas in Norway, and the Thames, 'Monet found everything he needed for his art and legacy in the offerings of rural France' (ibid., p. 72). The reasons for Monet's concentration on series pictures were many. First of all, Monet turned 50 in 1890: having discovered Giverny in 1883 and travelled extensively in the first seven years of his stay in his cherished paradis de campagne, in the late summer of 1890, he felt a stronger urge to work closer to home. So deep was his attachment to the country-house where he regularly stayed that, when the mansion came up for sale in October 1890, he decided to buy it and settle there permanently. As he wrote to Gustave Geffroy after signing the contract for his house: 'Je suis enfin content, me voilà devenu propriétaire et certain de rester dans notre cher Giverny' (letter of 15 November 1890). Having led a rather nomadic train de vie until then, during the hot months of summer of 1890, when he painted Champ d'avoine, he was perfectly happy to find his deepest inspiration in the idyllic land around Giverny.
Secondly, his more recent pictorial experiments - and particularly his first series of Meules - heightened his interests in the aesthetic possibilities of series painting, thus aiming at 'more refined effects and a more complicated painting style' (P.H. Tucker, ibid., p. 73).
Finally, Tucker also suggests that there is also a socio-political angle to his Champs d'avoine et de coquelicots (W.1251 to W.1260) pictures: 'It certainly was no coincidence that his concentration on rural France, beginning with his views in 1890 of hay and oats and poppy fields, occured at the same time that the country began to realize that it was no longer a true leader in the Western world' (ibid., p. 73). His celebration of the beauties of France profonde was thus inspired by his intention to boost the country's wealth and opulence by paying homage to an established tradition of rural painting, in line with his colleagues Millet (whose Angelus was painted in 1889) and Pissarro, whose socialist beliefs were even stronger than those of Monet.
Urged on by this complex mix of personal, artistic, and political feelings, Monet started the Champ d''avoine et coquelicots series in late July and early August 1890. Having set his easel on the plateau north of the valley of Giverny, at the edge of the woods of La Réserve and Le Gros Chêne, looking east, he produced a series of works 'rigorously painted, suggesting that [he] had become more concerned not only with overall atmospheric effects, as he told Geffroy that summer, but also with emphasizing the decorative, tapestry-like qualities that painting can achieve. For above all, these canvases rely on their striking combination of artifice and observation, pattern and materiality, which harks back to the Creuse Valley canvases and most particularly to the Grainstacks [sic] pictures of 1888-1889' (ibid., p. 77). Monet's focus on the grounds surrounding his house was not new, but his attention to rich and fertile fields was unprecedented. In the 1880s he painted those fields very rarely, and had always portrayed them before any crops had grown or after they had been harvested. 'Thus, when Monet returned to these subjects in 1890, he was consciously reacquainting himself not only with Giverny's sheer beauty but also with its fundamental agrarian character' (ibid., p. 77). He was so utterly entranced by the full bloom of the oat and poppy fields, that he overcame the rheumatism afflicting him during the whole month of June - which had been rainy and heavy, and thus very bad for his morale. On 6 August 1890, as he worked relentlessly on the Champs d'avoine series, he wrote to Paul Durand-Ruel: 'I am so taken up by work', and on 24 August he sent a letter of excuses to de Bellio, who had been alarmed by Monet's long silence: 'My excuse is that I am working enormously hard and by the evening I am tired and absorbed in what I am doing'. The harvest put a halt to his inspiration, and when the grainstacks rose upon the landscape, filling the wide pink-orange sea of the oat fields, he returned to the Meules (see fig. 4) after a two-year hiatus. The celebrated Meules are, thence, logically and formally anticipated by the Champs. Both series share the same pure, strongly geometric compositions, where the fields, hills and sky are reduced to stylised parallel bands of colour. Monets's artistic thought developed through the series: the artist toyed sharply with the chromatic palette and the subtle game of shadow and light, recording the different moments of the day and conditions of light.
The other works of the same subject show clearly how superbly well Monet was able to manipulate light effects. Only a mature artist, completely in control of his own technique and a master of his palette, could catch the sublime nuances of colour and shadow that make each of the pictures so extraordinarily different in mood. Compare, for example, the chaleur of Champs d'avoine aux coquelicots (fig. 4) or the harsh sunlight of Le Champ d'avoine aux coquelicots (fig. 3) now housed in the Musée des Beaux Arts, Strasbourg.
John Nicholas Brown (fig. 1) purchased Champ d'Avoine on the basis of this strong recommendation and hung the picture alongside works by other major Impressionists such as Sisley, Pissarro and Cézanne which he already owned. By extraordinary coincidence, Cézanne's watercolour Le bassin du Jas de Bouffan (lot 14 in the present sale) was in the same distinguished collection.
Shortly after acquiring the picture, in 1892, Brown lent it to the Saint Botolph Club in Boston, where regular exhibitions of Impressionism were held at the time. It was shown twice in Monet shows in 1892 and 1899. More recently Champ d'avoine was exhibited in the pivotal 1990 exhibition entitled Monet in the '90s. The Series Paintings, organised by the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston which later travelled to the Art Institute of Chicago and the Royal Academy of Art in London. Throughout this impressive exhibition history, including a period of loan at the Baltimore Museum of Art, Champ d'avoine has never left the collection for which it was originally bought in 1891.
As P. Hayes Tucker has pointed out (op. cit., 1989, pp. 69-113), Monet's involvement with rural subjects began with the two experimental series of 1888 and 1889, the first series of Meules à Giverny (W.1213 to W.1217a) and the Ravins de la Creuse (W.1218 to W.1227 and W.1230 to W.1233). Then in 1890 began a decade dedicated to the almost exclusive depiction - and intentional celebration - of the pastoral surroundings of Giverny. In fact, with the exception of his views of Rouen Cathedral, Mount Kolsaas in Norway, and the Thames, 'Monet found everything he needed for his art and legacy in the offerings of rural France' (ibid., p. 72). The reasons for Monet's concentration on series pictures were many. First of all, Monet turned 50 in 1890: having discovered Giverny in 1883 and travelled extensively in the first seven years of his stay in his cherished paradis de campagne, in the late summer of 1890, he felt a stronger urge to work closer to home. So deep was his attachment to the country-house where he regularly stayed that, when the mansion came up for sale in October 1890, he decided to buy it and settle there permanently. As he wrote to Gustave Geffroy after signing the contract for his house: 'Je suis enfin content, me voilà devenu propriétaire et certain de rester dans notre cher Giverny' (letter of 15 November 1890). Having led a rather nomadic train de vie until then, during the hot months of summer of 1890, when he painted Champ d'avoine, he was perfectly happy to find his deepest inspiration in the idyllic land around Giverny.
Secondly, his more recent pictorial experiments - and particularly his first series of Meules - heightened his interests in the aesthetic possibilities of series painting, thus aiming at 'more refined effects and a more complicated painting style' (P.H. Tucker, ibid., p. 73).
Finally, Tucker also suggests that there is also a socio-political angle to his Champs d'avoine et de coquelicots (W.1251 to W.1260) pictures: 'It certainly was no coincidence that his concentration on rural France, beginning with his views in 1890 of hay and oats and poppy fields, occured at the same time that the country began to realize that it was no longer a true leader in the Western world' (ibid., p. 73). His celebration of the beauties of France profonde was thus inspired by his intention to boost the country's wealth and opulence by paying homage to an established tradition of rural painting, in line with his colleagues Millet (whose Angelus was painted in 1889) and Pissarro, whose socialist beliefs were even stronger than those of Monet.
Urged on by this complex mix of personal, artistic, and political feelings, Monet started the Champ d''avoine et coquelicots series in late July and early August 1890. Having set his easel on the plateau north of the valley of Giverny, at the edge of the woods of La Réserve and Le Gros Chêne, looking east, he produced a series of works 'rigorously painted, suggesting that [he] had become more concerned not only with overall atmospheric effects, as he told Geffroy that summer, but also with emphasizing the decorative, tapestry-like qualities that painting can achieve. For above all, these canvases rely on their striking combination of artifice and observation, pattern and materiality, which harks back to the Creuse Valley canvases and most particularly to the Grainstacks [sic] pictures of 1888-1889' (ibid., p. 77). Monet's focus on the grounds surrounding his house was not new, but his attention to rich and fertile fields was unprecedented. In the 1880s he painted those fields very rarely, and had always portrayed them before any crops had grown or after they had been harvested. 'Thus, when Monet returned to these subjects in 1890, he was consciously reacquainting himself not only with Giverny's sheer beauty but also with its fundamental agrarian character' (ibid., p. 77). He was so utterly entranced by the full bloom of the oat and poppy fields, that he overcame the rheumatism afflicting him during the whole month of June - which had been rainy and heavy, and thus very bad for his morale. On 6 August 1890, as he worked relentlessly on the Champs d'avoine series, he wrote to Paul Durand-Ruel: 'I am so taken up by work', and on 24 August he sent a letter of excuses to de Bellio, who had been alarmed by Monet's long silence: 'My excuse is that I am working enormously hard and by the evening I am tired and absorbed in what I am doing'. The harvest put a halt to his inspiration, and when the grainstacks rose upon the landscape, filling the wide pink-orange sea of the oat fields, he returned to the Meules (see fig. 4) after a two-year hiatus. The celebrated Meules are, thence, logically and formally anticipated by the Champs. Both series share the same pure, strongly geometric compositions, where the fields, hills and sky are reduced to stylised parallel bands of colour. Monets's artistic thought developed through the series: the artist toyed sharply with the chromatic palette and the subtle game of shadow and light, recording the different moments of the day and conditions of light.
The other works of the same subject show clearly how superbly well Monet was able to manipulate light effects. Only a mature artist, completely in control of his own technique and a master of his palette, could catch the sublime nuances of colour and shadow that make each of the pictures so extraordinarily different in mood. Compare, for example, the chaleur of Champs d'avoine aux coquelicots (fig. 4) or the harsh sunlight of Le Champ d'avoine aux coquelicots (fig. 3) now housed in the Musée des Beaux Arts, Strasbourg.