Lee Ann Torrans Looks at Works of Monet at the Dallas Museum of Art

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The Works of Monet at the DMA

February 28, 2012

DFW Tours! Dallas Art and Fort Worth Art

Claude Monet at the DMA

These works from 1880 and 1884 sit side by side at the DMA.

Valle Buona, Near Bordighera 1884

This landscape depicts the rugged countryside along the Riviera at the French-Italian border. The Valle Buona (“Tranquil Valley”) is at the left. High on the right is a bare suggestion of Sasso, the mountain village dominated by the thousand-meter peak, Mount Caggio. Monet depicted this scene during his first painting trip to the Mediterranean. In 1884, he spent January through March at Bordighera, an Italian health resort, and the month of April at nearby Menton.

Claude Monet – The Seine at Lavacourt – 1880

The Seine at Lavacourt. 1880.

This painting was based on sketches made outdoors and then probably executed within the studio. Monet painted this work according to traditional compositional rules-a strong horizontal axis intersects with the central inverted triangular form made up of the trees and their reflection on the surface of the water. This geometric structure invests the composition with calm and order, complementing the harmonious palette of spring green and delicate shades of blue. There was, perhaps, a practical inspiration for the firm sense of structure in this painting. Monet struggled during these years with his financial straits and attempted to expand his public and market, seeking therefore to “do something more judicious, more bourgeois.”