Claude Monet - Antibes, das Fort (1888)

 

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Claude Monet portrays the old town of Antibes, a thriving tourist destination on the French Riviera, against the backdrop of the snow-covered Alps. To capture the intense light of the South in his color palette, he heightened the brilliance of the colors. He started with white as the base and then elevated the color values of blue, red, green, and orange.

From January to May 1888, Claude Monet spent four months in Antibes, resulting in 39 compositions. This return trip to the sunny Riviera was likely inspired by the success of his first extended painting campaign on the Mediterranean, which took him to the northern Italian town of Bordighera in 1884. On the advice of his friend, the writer Guy de Maupassant, Monet settled in Antibes at the artist's inn Château de la Pinède.

This composition is part of a group of several works that depict the old town and its architectural landmarks from the Plage du Ponteil: the Bastion Saint-André, the Château Grimaldi, and the Cathedral of Notre-Dame-de-la-Platea. The rocky promontory jutting into the sea on the left in the middle ground is the farthest end of the Pointe d'Îlette. The distant vantage point allowed Monet to dedicate the expansive foreground entirely to the sunlit water surface, illuminated by the afternoon sun. The intricate interplay of vibrant blue and green tones in the water finds an echo in the cyan-colored sky. In the middle, the city silhouette and the panorama of the snow-covered Alpine range stand out decoratively from the rest of the composition, with accents in pink, ochre, and white.