By Margaret Burgess
Associate Curator of European and Modern Art

 
Monet, Monte Carlo

Hello! My name is Margaret and I’m the new Associate Curator of European and Modern Art at the Portland Museum of Art. I’m delighted to be here and enjoying getting to know my colleagues, studying the Museum’s collections, and acclimating to this wonderful city. Many of my ancestors and relatives were artists who lived and painted in Maine, so it’s nice to think that I’m walking in their footsteps.

I moved here from Washington, D.C., where I was working at the Corcoran Gallery of Art. Coming from the Corcoran, with its beautiful landscape by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, View from Cap Martin of Monte Carlo (circa 1884), I was particularly excited to see Claude Monet’s Monte Carlo Seen from Roquebrune (1884) here on view at the Museum on the second floor. This impressionist masterpiece is part of the Scott M. Black Collection on loan to the Museum. Both paintings depict the view along the Mediterranean Sea of Monte Carlo and the majestic rock formation the Tête de Chien (Dog’s Head) in the distance. The canvases were inspired by a journey which Renoir and Monet took together in 1883. The two artists traveled together from Marseilles to Genoa in December, visiting Monte Carlo along the way. Renoir remarked in a letter to his dealer Durand-Ruel about the fruitfulness of the expedition, noting that the terrain was magnificent, the horizons stretched on forever, and the mountains were bathed in a rosy tinge in the evening. He concluded that they were using “de belles couleurs.”* These beautiful colors are evident in both landscapes.

With the Renoir fresh in my mind and the Monet before me here, it has been fascinating for me to compare and contrast the two paintings and to marvel at how each artist approached the scene as well as negotiated each other’s style and technique. Both artists deftly framed the view of Monte Carlo with trees at the left and varied their brushstrokes across the canvas. As we can see in Monet’s painting, the artist applied staccato vertical brushstrokes to depict the buildings, used layered horizontal strokes to render the sea, and deployed more arabesque lines to capture the trees in the breeze. I’m eager to unite these works in a special exhibition here at the Museum in the future.

I hope that you will come to visit your favorite works of European and Modern Art here at the Portland Museum of Art and I look forward to meeting you.

Image credits: Claude Monet (France, 1840–1926), Monte Carlo vu de Roquebrune (Monte Carlo Seen from Roquebrune), 1884, oil on canvas, 25 7/8 x 32 inches. Portland Museum of Art, Maine.

*Letter from Renoir to Durand-Ruel, Lionello Venturi, ed., Les Archives de L’Impressionnisme. Lettres de Renoir, Monet, Pissarro, Sisley et Autres, vol. 1 (Paris: Durand-Ruel, Éditeurs, 1939), pp. 126-7. “Nous avons jugé qu’il était préférable de bien étudier le pays pour y retourner et savoir de suite où s’arrêter. Nous avons tout vu ou presque depuis Marseille jusqu’à Gênes. Tout est superbe. Des horizons dont on n’a aucune idée. Ce soir les montagnes étaient roses…Jusqu’à present nous avons sali des toiles et usé de belles couleurs.”