Brief Report
This painting, dating from 1873 and showing the Seine at Asnières with three barges in the centre, has an almost uninterrupted provenance and is believed to have been sold at a very early date. Probably it was one of the paintings by Monet, Morisot, Renoir and Sisley that were put up for auction at the Hôtel Drouot on 24 March 1875, in other words two years after it was painted [Wildenstein 1974, no. 268, p. 228]. In this work too, in the standard P20 size on a thin creamwhite ground, Monet evidently used charcoal to sketch parts of the composition (fig. 8). Here we see similarities with the working procedure he used in the painting of fishing-boats on the beach at Etretat, which is also in the Cologne collection, albeit dating from about ten years later (1883/84), and also the 1885 painting of houses in the fog at Falaise. The paint only rakes the elevated parts of the canvas, and while there are wet-in-wet applications, most are wet on dry, indicating that this work was the result of a number of sessions (figs. 9, 10). Whether all these sessions were in situ or whether the work, once started, was finished in the studio, is still uncertain. Monet is known to have employed both approaches. [House 1986]. Technological examination of the painting has revealed that two additions have been made, in the left foreground and on the right-hand edge (figs 4, 12, 13). These additions without a doubt constitute an attempt by someone else to improve the picture; they closely imitate Monet’s brushwork, which uses up nearly all the paint on the brush at each stroke, but stand out when the picture is viewed under UV (figs 4, 13). These overpaintings are separated by a layer of varnish from the original paint-layer, and do not share the network of age- related cracks evinced by the latter. It may be that these areas were perceived as incomplete or monotonous. The illustration of the work used in the catalogue raisonné goes back to a black-and-white photograph from the Durand-Ruel gallery; while undated, it is later than 1928, and shows the condition of the painting before this (likewise undated) intervention, which itself mirrors the reception history of the work (fig. 13).
Claude Monet
born on 14 November 1840 in Paris,
died on 5 December 1926 in Giverny
Fig. 02
Verso, lined
Fig. 03
Raking light
Fig. 04
UV fluorescence
Fig. 05
X-ray
Fig. 06
Detail, signature
Fig. 07
Thin ground, microscopic photograph (M = 1 mm)
Fig. 08
Underdrawing in charcoal(?), microscopic photograph (M = 1 mm)
Fig. 09
Wet-in-wet paint applications, microscopic photograph (M = 1 mm)
Fig. 10
Detail, numerous brushstrokes which not only mix with the underlying paint applications but were also applied wet on dry
Fig. 11
Brush-hairs embedded in the paint-layer, microscopic photograph (M = 1 mm)
Fig. 12
Detail of the same area at the bottom edge under UV (left) and in incident light, paint application added by someone other than the artist, microscopic photograph top left, craquelure in the original blue paint-layer does not continue into the green, which was added later (M = 1 mm)
Fig. 13
Extent of the later nonauthentic additions: current condition in incident light (top); mapping of the overpainting under UV (middle); historical photograph from the Durand-Rouel gallery, undated, records condition of painting at some time post-1928 (bottom)