The Church of Varengeville and the Gorge of Moutiers Pass by Claude Monet

The Church of Varengeville and the Gorge of Moutiers Pass by Claude Monet (1882)

A church on the edge

The church is small and far off. It stands at the upper left, on the crest of a green headland, a dark cluster of roof and spire against a pale sky. From there the slope runs down to the right in bands of green and violet shadow, and ends in a spur that drops towards the water. Beyond it the sea and the sky are almost the same milky blue, divided by a faint line of haze. Nothing moves there; there are no boats and no figures.

The nearer half of the canvas is scrub, painted in short, thick strokes of yellow, orange, rust and green that seem to shift in the wind. In the middle a single small tree has been bent over by it. Along the bottom a pale path crosses the slope. In the lower left corner, in red, is the signature: Claude Monet 82.

Varengeville-sur-Mer

Varengeville is a village on the Channel coast of Normandy, about five miles west of Dieppe, where a gap in the high chalk cliffs gives access to a pebble beach. Its church of Saint Valery dates from the thirteenth century and sits on top of the cliffs, so close to the edge that it would be at risk if they collapsed. Monet has made it the smallest thing in the picture and put the whole width of the gorge between it and us.

The church is still in use. Its churchyard now holds the grave of Georges Braque, topped by a mosaic of a white dove, and inside is a stained-glass Tree of Jesse by Braque.

1882

Monet was in debt at the time. At the end of 1881 he had moved with Alice Hoschedé and her children to Poissy, on the Seine; that stay was short, and in December 1882 the river flooded. He showed with the Impressionists for the last time in 1882, and the Paris stock-market crash of the same year cost his dealer, Paul Durand-Ruel, heavily. That year he also painted on this stretch of coast: his Rocks at Pourville, Low Tide shows the shore just west of Dieppe, a few miles from this headland.

Painting a subject over and over as the light and weather changed later became his habit. He painted the church at Varengeville more than once in 1882. In this version the light is soft and hazy, and the far end of the view dissolves into the sea.

The painting

It is oil on canvas, 60 by 81 centimetres, signed and dated at the lower left, and it is number 728 in Daniel Wildenstein's catalogue of Monet's paintings, where it is titled The Church at Varengeville and the Gorge of Les Moutiers. The Columbus Museum of Art, which catalogues it as The Church of Varengeville and the Gorge of Moutiers Pass, received it as a gift from Mr and Mrs Arthur J. Kobacker (accession number 1981.015).

About this print

Made from a photograph of the whole canvas, in its wide landscape format, with the church at the upper left and the signature at the lower left.

Sources: Columbus Museum of Art, 1981.015 · Wikidata Q50532792 · Wikimedia Commons · PubHist · WikiArt · Wikipedia, "Varengeville-sur-Mer", "Claude Monet", "Hautot-sur-Mer"