Claude Monet - Église de Vernon, soleil 1894
Église de Vernon, soleil 1894
65x92cm oil/canvas
Sold for: USD 7.78 million
Auction house: Sotheby’s, New York
Sale date: 04 November 2014
Seller: J. Barry Donahue Fine Arts, Inc., Litchfield
Buyer: Anonymous buyer
From Sotheby’s, New York:
Monet first introduced ecclesiastical buildings into a few canvases painted in the 1870s and they remained a source of inspiration for many years. In 1883 he produced three paintings that depicted Notre-Dame de Vernon. These sunlit pictures captured the different aspects of the church and its position among the town above the river. The present work was produced ten years later during the peak of Monet's project of series paintings; using a small boat he rowed out into the middle of the river and painted seven canvases that focused on capturing the ephemeral effect of mist and light rather than the architectural details (D. Wildenstein, op. cit., 1996. nos. 1386-1391a).