Lot Essay
In January of 1883, Monet visited Etretat, escaping his financial worries which had continued, despite the success of his Pourville paintings. There he became motivated with a renewed enthusiasm, inspired by the dramatic coastline, which had had a similar effect on Delacroix and Courbet. The latter would have been on Monet's mind, as Courbet had challenged him to understand nature to a much greater degree than had the retiring Boudin. It was on the Normandy coast that Monet and Courbet had been at their closest during a previous visit from 1868-1869. Monet's plan was to create a large painting of the cliffs "after Courbet" (fig. 1) with the additional comment that the project would be "terribly audacious". However the weather turned violent and most of the studies were produced from an annex in the Hotel Blanquet. Undeterred, the artist braved places that Courbet had not discovered and painted two scenes from the top of the Falaise d'Aval which gave him a view of the Manneporte. La Manneporte vue en aval and La Manneporte (fig. 2) are "extraordinary declarations of mass, tremendous displacements of gravity... like the bones of ruins of the cathedrals of giants" (R. Gordon and A. Forge, Monet, New York, 1987, p. 97).
Both paintings recall La Porte d'Amon, Etretat (Harvard University Art Museums, Cambridge, Massachussetts) of circa 1868, although the compositions of the later works provide a far greater impact, as we are overshadowed by the scale and weight of the cliff. Robert Herbert describes the Metropolitan Museum of Art's version:
"Of all the paintings of this campaign, this one is the closest to the Romantic conception of the sublime, in which the human observer is overawed by singular manifestations of nature's power. We would never mistake it for a romantic painting because of its limitation to a fragment of nature rendered in striking surface geometry , so different from the expansive compositions of an earlier era, but its retention of the sublime is reason enough to call it a "neo-romantic" composition." (R.L. Herbert, Monet on the Normandy Coast, Tourism and Painting 1867-1886, New Haven, 1994, p. 86).
Monet would repeat the composition four times between 1885 and 1886, another of which is also in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
(fig. 1) Gustave Courbet, La Falaise Etretat aprs une Orage, 1870, Muse d'Orsay, Paris
(fig. 2) Claude Monet, La Manneporte, Etretat, 1883, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Both paintings recall La Porte d'Amon, Etretat (Harvard University Art Museums, Cambridge, Massachussetts) of circa 1868, although the compositions of the later works provide a far greater impact, as we are overshadowed by the scale and weight of the cliff. Robert Herbert describes the Metropolitan Museum of Art's version:
"Of all the paintings of this campaign, this one is the closest to the Romantic conception of the sublime, in which the human observer is overawed by singular manifestations of nature's power. We would never mistake it for a romantic painting because of its limitation to a fragment of nature rendered in striking surface geometry , so different from the expansive compositions of an earlier era, but its retention of the sublime is reason enough to call it a "neo-romantic" composition." (R.L. Herbert, Monet on the Normandy Coast, Tourism and Painting 1867-1886, New Haven, 1994, p. 86).
Monet would repeat the composition four times between 1885 and 1886, another of which is also in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
(fig. 1) Gustave Courbet, La Falaise Etretat aprs une Orage, 1870, Muse d'Orsay, Paris
(fig. 2) Claude Monet, La Manneporte, Etretat, 1883, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York