With one month left to experience Seeing Nature: Landscape Masterworks from the Paul G. Allen Family Collection, we’ll be posting essay excerpts from the exhibition catalog written by Portland Art Museum curators.
Landscape on Saint-Martin Island (En Paysage dans I’ile Saint-Martin), Monet
By Brian Ferriso, Portland Art Museum Director and Chief Curator
“My studio! I have never had a studio, and can’t understand how one can shut oneself up in a room. To draw, yes; to paint, no.” He subsequently responded: “This is ‘my studio!’” with a sweeping gesture toward the Seine, the hills and Vetheuil.[1] All of this occurred several months before Monet painted En Paysage dans I’ile Saint-Martin, one of the last works he created in Vetheuil, a small village 40 miles west of Paris where he lived with his wife and two children, and the family of Ernest Hoschedé, a patron of Monet’s.
[1] Interview with Emile Taboureux, La Vie Moderne, June 1880 (from Daniel Wildenstein, Monet or Triumph of Impressionism, Taschen p. 162)