From VÉtheuil to Giverny

For all the interest he took in painting various aspects of Paris, notably the Tuileries, Monet never felt at home in the city and left suburban Argenteuil in 1878 for the country village of Vétheuil, on the Seine about midway between Paris and Rouen. But another trial was in store for him there. After the birth of his second son in March 1878, his wife's health declined and she died in October 1879. Monet remained at Vétheuil till 1881. During those four years, in spite of his bereavement, his poverty, his anxiety for his children, he carried on with his work, persisting in his chosen path, reverting again and again to the same motifs seen in different seasons, at different times of day: the road through the village, the village itself seen from the opposite bank of the Seine or from the bend of the river with a hillside in the background. The severity of the winters gave him an opportunity of painting snow effects and views of the ice on the Seine.

His Vétheuil period confirmed the trend of his art (already clearly marked in his Argenteuil pictures) toward the expression of atmospheric light. But now, as he concentrated less on nautical themes and more on straight landscape, his subject matter sometimes encouraged him to use a full brush, with the result that some of his snowscapes are overpainted and ponderous. In most of his summer landscapes, on the other hand, and in many winter ones too, he broke up masses more and more boldly into a checkerwork of separate brushstrokes. These landscapes are characterized by a horizontal composition.

Winter in Vétheuil ( Buffalo) is a typical example of the playing off of snow against rich brown earth, while Entrance to the Village of Vétheuil ( Boston) is pervaded by a bluish tonality that gives it an airy, weightless luminosity. The views of drift-ice on the Seine also vary greatly in their effects, running from the most aerial to the most massive. The different ways in which icicles and water reflect and refract light gave rise to contrasts and alternations that must have delighted Monet. It was this very problem that he tackled twenty years later at Giverny when he painted water lilies.

In 1878, at the news that his friend and benefactor Ernest Hoschedé was utterly ruined, Monet at once came forward and took Madame Hoschedé and her six children into his own home. He thus paid an old debt of gratitude but his resources were strained to the limit. He was entirely dependent on advances from Durand-Ruel, whose business affairs, fortunately, had taken a turn for the better. In December 1881 he moved from Vétheuil to Poissy, near Saint-Germain-en-Laye. But finding the place uninspiring, he spent the rest of the winter on the Channel coast, first at Dieppe, then at Pourville, "a delightful spot in the neighborhood of Dieppe"; there he stayed over two months, availing himself of splendid weather "to work like a madman." But when he returned to Poissy in May the spell was broken: "illness has entered the house like a fateful visitant" and he had all he could do to look after his numerous charges.

Bound and determined to leave Poissy, he finally went back to Pourville in June 1882, taking Madame Hoschedé and the children with him. But by now the weather had turned bad and his work went poorly. The letters he wrote to Durand-Ruel in the course of that summer show him fluctuating between moods of hope and despair, till finally, on September 26, he wrote as follows: "This season, to put it bluntly, has been a dead loss for me and I might as well resign myself to the fact. I won't say that all these difficulties may not have compelled me to exert myself, and even to progress, but there is nothing to show for it as yet, for I don't see a single piece of good work in all these half-finished canvases. I feel very unhappy and worried about it all."

The canvases referred to are those painted on the cliffs in the neighborhood of Dieppe, Pourville and Varengeville. Almost all present the same characteristics: a composition in the Japanese manner with a plunging glimpse of the sea viewed from a foreground of cliffs; a dazzling flood of light that seems to volatilize everything; a technique of small, "comma" brushstrokes calculated to render these flashing particles of light.