Original text : (Automatic translation)
Vue de Vétheuil, 1880. Oil on canvas. PROVENANCE - Galerie Durand-Ruel, Paris This painting was acquired from the artist in Dec. 1881 - Henry S. Howe, Boston This work was acquired from the above in 1904, and hence by descent to the previous owners.
The present painting is an exciting rediscovery. Vue de Vétheuil was bought by the pioneering Boston collector Henry S. Howe from Monet's dealers Galerie Durand-Ruel in 1904. It has remained in Howe's family to this day. Unseen in public for nearly a century, the present work belongs to an important series that Monet made depicting the Seine at Vétheuil, where he lived and worked between 1878 and 1881. In 1878, beset with financial difficulties, Monet decided to move from Argenteuil further down the Seine valley to Vétheuil, a medieval town located on the Seine about 28 miles Northwest of Paris. He and his family, along with Alice and Ernest Hoschedé and their family, shared a house on the river, and Monet would often take a boat out to paint. Monet tirelessly explored this area for the three years he lived there, depicting scenes in all seasons. His works of these years, while less well known than those of the early 1870?s or his later series, were pivotal to Monet's life and career. Monet was at this point the acknowledged leader of the Impressionists and had been hailed by critics such as Emile Zola and Georges Rivière. It was Monet's Impression, soleil levant, 1873 (Wildenstein, no. 263, Paris, Musée Marmottan-Monet), shown at the first Impressionist exhibition, that provided a name for the group; the critic Louis Leroy famously wrote that this "impression" was less finished than half-manufactured wallpaper.
To paint the present scene, Monet anchored the craft northwest of Vétheuil, facing upstream toward the town. The left side of the canvas shows the bank of the Seine; on the right lay the Ile de Bouche, one of several slender spits of land that divide this stretch of the river.

Location : LONDON