Bordighera by Claude Monet - 1884 - 65 × 80.8 cm Art Institute of Chicago Bordighera by Claude Monet - 1884 - 65 × 80.8 cm Art Institute of Chicago

Bordighera

Oil on canvas • 65 × 80.8 cm
  • Claude Monet - 14 November 1840 - 5 December 1926 Claude Monet 1884

Early in 1884 Claude Monet traveled to Bordighera, a town on the Italian Riviera near the border between Italy and France, for a working visit of three weeks that turned into nearly three months. In a letter to sculptor Auguste Rodin describing his efforts to capture the brilliant Mediterranean light, Monet declared that he was “fencing, wrestling, with the sun.” In other letters he complained of the impossibility of finding a suitable subject amid the region’s abundant vegetation. In this sun-drenched composition painted from a hilltop vantage point, the sea is barely visible through the interlaced trunks of local pine trees.

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