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Seacoast at Trouville

Claude Monet (French, 1840–1926)
1881

Medium/Technique Oil on canvas
Dimensions Overall: 60.7 x 81.3 cm (23 7/8 x 32 in.)
Framed: 90.8 x 108 cm (35 3/4 x 42 1/2 in.)
Credit Line The John Pickering Lyman Collection—Gift of Miss Theodora Lyman
Accession Number19.1314
NOT ON VIEW
CollectionsEurope
ClassificationsPaintings
A single tree, deformed by the constant buffeting of onshore winds, is the central motif of this painting by Monet. Because the horizon line is effaced in a haze of creamy blue strokes, there is no sense of recession into the distance. Such an abstract field behind the tree deprives it of volume, so that it reads as a flat pattern on the surface. This pattern is so dominant that its outline determines the shapes of other forms in the painting. Not only do the low blue bushes that extend from one edge of the canvas to the other echo the general form of the tree's foliage, but the very ground answers the bending motion in low hillocks parallel or related to the tree's angle. Although the tree's form is dominant and determines so many other shapes in the painting, the tree in itself is almost ephemeral, for it is barely rooted in the soil. The painting is thus an exercise in pattern making rather than a naturalistic description of a place.

InscriptionsLower right: 81. Claude Monet
ProvenanceBy June 1882, possibly sold by the artist to Durand-Ruel, Paris; August 1883, sold by Durand-Ruel, Paris, to Galerie Georges Petit, Paris. 1888, Charles Leroux, Paris; February 27-28, 1888, Leroux sale, Hôtel Drouot, Paris, lot 61, to Durand-Ruel, Paris; 1888, probably sold by Durand-Ruel to Mrs. Catholina Lambert, Paterson, NJ; February 28, 1899, sold by Lambert to Durand-Ruel, New York (stock no. 2122); April 13, 1907, sold by Durand-Ruel, New York, to John Pickering Lyman (b. 1847 – d. 1914), Portsmouth, NH; by inheritance to his sister, Theodora Lyman (b. 1852 – d. 1942), Portsmouth; 1919, gift of Theodora Lyman to the MFA. (Accession Date: September 18, 1919)