Heavy Sea at Pourville|Claude Monet |Search Collection | The National Museum of Western Art

Updated 09 April 2025

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On Display

Permanent collection

Claude Monet

Paris, 1840 - Giverny, 1926

Heavy Sea at Pourville

Date	1897
Materials and Techniques	oil on canvas
Size（cm）	73.5 x 101
Inscriptions	Signed and dated lower left: Claude Monet 97
Credit Line	Matsukata Collection
Standard ref.	Wildenstein 1444; M774
Category	Paintings
Collection Number	P.1959-0149

Throughout his life Monet painted one of his favorite motifs, the landscapes of the sea and sky of his home region of Normandy. This subject can be said to have been bequeathed to Monet by his teacher Boudin. Yet while the numerous works that remain by Boudin focus on genre elements, Monet was interested in the landscape itself. As opposed to the techniques used in the majority of his other landscapes, Monet employed a rhythmic blending of rough brush strokes and a very light layering of pigment in this work created in a small fisherman's hut by the beach. The brushwork is very slight on the light sparkles of the calm surface of the sea and thickens and becomes more agitated as the artist depicts an instant impression of peaking waves and scudding clouds. While quite distant from the brushwork roots of the original Impressionism, the free brushwork found in Monet's final works is prefigured here. (Source: Masterpieces of the National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo, 2009, cat. no.75)

Provenance

Purchased possibly from the artist by Kojiro Matsukata, Kobe, ca. December 1921 [see letter from Léonce Bénédite to (Claude Monet), dated 11 December 1921, in the Bibliothèque centrale des musées nationaux, Paris (copy in NMWA curatorial file)]; sequestered by French government, 1944; vested in French government under San Francisco Peace Treaty, 1952; transferred from French to Japanese government, 23 January 1959; entered into NMWA, April 1959.

Exhibition History

1924: Exposition Claude Monet, organisée au bénéfice des Victimes de la Catastrophe du Japon, Galeries Georges Petit, Paris, 4 January 1924 - 18 January 1924, cat. no. 15
1952: Monet, Kunsthaus, Zürich, 0 1952 - 0 1952, cat. no. 90
1952: Monet, Dienst voor Schone Kunsten, Den Haag, 0 1952 - 0 1952, cat. no. 71
1982: Monet, National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo, 9 October 1982 - 28 November 1982, cat. no. 43
1997: Expressiveness of Materials, National Museum of Art, Osaka, 17 April 1997 - 22 June 1997, cat. no. 27
2005: Museum Collection, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nantes, 8 March 2005 - 29 May 2005
2008: Claude Monet: Impression, soleil levant , Nagoya City Art Museum, 23 December 2008 - 8 February 2009, cat. no. 11, col. repr.
2013: Monet, An Eye for Landscapes: Innovation in 19th Century French Landscape Paintings, Pola Museum of Art, 13 July 2013 - 24 November 2013, The National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo, 7 December 2013-9 March 2014, cat. no. 44, col. repr.
2019: The Matsukata Collection: A One-Hundred-Year Odyssey: Upon the 60th Anniversary of the NMWA, The National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo, 11 June 2019 - 23 September 2019, cat. no. 110, col. repr.
2022: Renoir—Monet—Gauguin: Images of a Floating World: the Collections of Kōjirō Matsukata and Karl Ernst Osthaus, Museum Folkwang, 6 February 2022 - 15 May 2022
2022: In Dialogue with Nature - from Friedrich, Monet and Van Gogh to Richter, The National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo, 4 June 2022 - 11 September 2022, cat. no. 6
2023: Claude Monet: Journey to Series Paintings, The Ueno Royal Museum, 20 October 2023 - 28 January 2024, Nakanoshima Museum of Art, Osaka, 10 February-6 May 2024, cat. no. 31

Bibliography

1955: La Collection Matsukata, Tokyo, Asahi- Shimbun, 1955 (Japanese), no. 38, repr.
1959: Omori, Keisuke. [Commentary]. Mizue: a monthly review of the fine arts. no. 651, Special Number, July 1959 (in Japanese)., p. 11, col. repr.
1961: Sekai Bijyutsu Zenshu. vol. 36, Tokyo, Kadokawa Shoten, 1961, pl. 3, col. repr. (detail)
1961: Catalogue du Musée National d'Art Occidental, Tokyo. Tokyo, The National Museum of Western Art, 1961 (Préface and Catalogue Général in Japanese and French), P-207.
1968: Annual bulletin of the National Museum of Western Art. No. 2, 1968, pp. 16-17, no. 25, repr.
1971: Kuroe, M. La mer de Pourville, À propos de la correction du titre d'un tableau de Monet. Annual bulletin of the National Museum of Western Art. No. 5, 1971, pp. 8-13.
1971: Les cent chefs-d'œuvre du Musée National d'Art Occidental. Tokyo, The National Museum of Western Art, 1971 (Japanese), no. 52, repr.
1975: Les cent chefs-d'œuvre du Musée National d'Art Occidental. Tokyo, The National Museum of Western Art, 1975 (Japanese)Z, no. 36, repr.
1978: Masterpieces of the National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo. Tokyo, The National Museum of Western Art, 1978 (Japanese, preface in Japanese and English), no. 43, repr.
1979: The National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo: Catalogue of Paintings. Tokyo, The National Museum of Western Art, 1979, no. 189, repr.
1979: Wildenstein, D. Claude Monet, biographie et catalogue raisonné. tome 3, Lausanne/ Paris, 1979, p. 200, no. 1444, repr.; tome 5, 1991, pp. 50, 215 (lettre no. 3061).
1990: The Old Matsukata Collection. Kobe City Museum, ed. Kobe, "Matsukata Korekushon Ten" Jikkoiinkai, 1990, cat. no. 1065.
1996: Wildenstein, Daniel. Monet: Catalogue raisonné. vol. 3, Cologne, Taschen, 1996, p. 598, cat. no. 1444, repr. color.
2006: Masterpieces of The National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo. Tokyo, The National Museum of Western Art; Tokyo, The Western Art Foundation, 2006 (Japanese, preface in Japanese and English), no. 75, col. repr.
2009: Masterpieces of The National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo. Tokyo, The National Museum of Western Art; Tokyo, The Western Art Foundation, 2009, no. 75, col. repr.
2013: MONET, An Eye For Landscapes: Innovation in 19th Century French Landscape Paintings(exh. cat.). Tokyo, TBS, c2013, cat. no. 44, col. repr.
2018: The Matsukata Collection: Complete Catalogue of the European Art. Kawaguchi, Masako; Jingaoka, Megumi, eds. vol. 1: Paintings, Tokyo, The National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo, 2018, cat. no. 774, col. repr.
2019: The Matsukata Collection: A One-Hundred-Year Odyssey (exh. cat.). Jingaoka, Megumi, ed. Tokyo, The National Museum of the Western Art, Tokyo; Yomiuri Shimbun; NHK; NHK Promotions, 2019, pp. 198, 202, 367, cat. no. 110, col. repr.
2022: Renoir—Monet—Gauguin: Images of a Floating World: the Collections of Kōjirō Matsukata and Karl Ernst Osthaus (exh.cat.). Engel, Nadine; Herlemann, Rebecca, eds. Berlin, Hatje Cantz, [2022], pp. 278, 366, col. repr.
2022: In Dialogue with Nature: from Friedrich, Monet and Van Gogh to Richter (exh. cat.). Jingaoka, Megumi; Shinfuji, Atsushi; Yomiuri Shimbun, Museum Exhibition Department, eds. Tokyo, The National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo; Yomiuri Shimbun; NHK; NHK Promotions, 2022, pp. 65, 254, cat. no. 6, col. repr.
2023: Claude Monet: Journey to Series Paintings (exh. cat.). Tempel, Benno et al. [Tokyo], Sankei Shimbun, 2023, pp. 85, 166, 211, cat. no. 31, col. repr.

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