La Corniche Near Monaco
Claude Monet
CLAUDE MONET, 1884. OIL ON CANVAS.
During trips to the French Riviera, Monet used his canvas as a means to freeze time. His paintings here capture so potently and accurately an atmosphere, taking a single moment and imbuing it with the gift of eternity, that though they depict known landscapes it is not the place that we recognise but the feeling. The sun lowers in the sky over a bend in La Corniche, now the major road connecting Nice and Monaco but then little more than a dirt path, and the world seems to glimmer under its light. The sea shimmers and the plants are vibrant and frenetic, cliffsides soften under a sky that mirrors the water below it and a calmness washes over the viewer. Monet’s trips to this part of the world began after the death of his first wife, and he revisited the same areas over a 6-year period, finding in the pastoral landscape not motif but salvation.