Assets
The Beach at Sainte-Adresse
Monet and Normandy
Though born in Paris, Monet was raised in Le Havre, a city in Normandy located at the mouth of the Seine River on the English Channel [illustrate simple period map of Normandy region indicating the sites discussed—will have to have graphic design create this; see image #1 for example] Having relocated there around the age of five with his family so that his father could work in the wholesale grocery business with his brother-in-law, Jacques Lecadre, Monet spent most of his childhood and adolescent years in the region and learned its picturesque coastal sites, villages, and vantage points very well. The Normandy coast changed dramatically over the course of the 19th century, due, in large part, to the expanded rail network and the proliferation of travel guidebooks and illustrated publications. What were once small, rural fishing villages at the beginning of the century rapidly became seaside resorts for tourists and vacationers, thereby changing the physical and social landscape in dramatic ways. fig. .1
Not only did the coastal landscape and sites of Normandy become popular for tourists, but they were also favorite subjects of many 19th century artists, especially Monet, who painted the region’s natural and man-made attractions hundreds of times during his career and is considered by many to be “the greatest visual poet of Normandy.” Monet’s seascapes of the 1860s—the decade before he became known as the leader of the Impressionist movement—most often featured the coasts at Le Havre (on the northern bank of the estuary of the Seine) [show map], Honfleur (on the southern bank of the estuary, across from Le Havre) [show map], and as visualized in the present picture, Sainte-Adresse [show map], a coastal suburb just northwest of Le Havre where the artist’s aunt, Sophie Lacadre, owned a villa. Recently scholars have noted that during this decade, there were divided opinions about the condition of Sainte-Adresse: some commented that “all the seductions of solitude, silence and oceanic contemplation still reign there”; others complained that it had “lost most of the rustic appearance which gave it its charm.” In any event, Sainte-Adresse was certainly more accessible to the public imagination by the mid-1860s, for it already had been popularized by the writings of French critic Alphonse Karr and documented by artists including painters Jean Baptiste Camille Corot, Johan Barthold Jongkind, and Frédéric Bazille, as well photographer Gustave Le Gray [comparative illustrations of 2 Gustave Le Gray photographs of Sainte-Adresse in AIC’s collection (1971.577.15; 1971.577.8); see images #2 and 3]. It is through this complex lens that one must read Monet’s The Beach at Sainte-Adresse.
Monet’s Early Paintings of Sainte-Adresse and the Normandy Coast
The Beach at Sainte-Adresse was executed in the summer of 1867, a time that was extraordinarily challenging for Monet. Having learned earlier that year that his mistress, Camille Doncieux, was pregnant, Monet moved into his aunt’s home in Sainte-Adresse, and in order to distance the situation from his disapproving family, he discreetly shuttled back and forth to Paris, where he had arranged for Camille to be cared for. Despite (or perhaps because of) his complicated personal life, Monet was productive; by the end of June, he wrote from Sainte-Adresse to painter Frédéric Bazille that he had “twenty or so canvases well under way, stunning seacapes, figures, and gardens, something of everything in fact.” It was not the first time Monet had painted the Normandy coast, or specifically Sainte-Adresse, however. Just two years earlier, Monet made his debut at the 1865 Paris Salon, where he exhibited two large, ambitious seascapes of the region—Pointe de la Hève at Low Tide (Kimbell Art Museum), a picture depicting the Sainte-Adresse beach looking northward; and Mouth of the Seine, Honfleur (Norton Simon Museum), which portrays a site on the southern bank of the estuary of the Seine, across from Le Havre[comparative illustrations of both; reference map; see images #4 and 5]. These two works—largely praised by Salon critics—were painted in Monet’s studio and were based on smaller oil studies on canvas that he had previously made on location. Notable in these Salon compositions as well as other paintings he made around this time is the fact that the artist downplayed the ongoing resort development in Normandy’s landscape. Created in large part with a rather muted, gray- and brown-infused palette, Monet’s earlier seascapes predominantly depicted brooding natural environments and featured the Normandy beaches and terrain as the workplace of its local inhabitants and fishermen.
Monet’s subsequent seascapes from the summer of 1867, however, proved to be markedly different from those he painted only a couple of years earlier. The Beach at Sainte-Adresse exemplifies his evolving painting technique at this time and foreshadows some of the qualities that would later become characteristic of the Impressionist movement; indeed, the fact that Monet seems to have chosen to first exhibit this painting publicly at the Second Impressionist exhibition in 1876—nearly ten years after the painting was executed—is a testament to his own recognition of this. Perhaps the most striking change is that Monet—in contrast to his earlier coastal landscapes—painted The Beach at Sainte-Adresse out-of-doors. Complaining of the difficulty of painting en plein air, Monet wrote to Bazille in July of that summer: “I am losing my sight,” he said. “I can barely see after working for half an hour; the doctor told me that I had to stop painting out of doors.” Undoubtedly, the severe glare he experienced and the changing weather conditions contributed to the color choices Monet used in creating these pictures, and indeed, the palette used in The Beach at Sainte-Adresse is blonder and brighter than that used in his 1865 Salon seascapes. In large part, this is due to the artist’s greater use of localized strong color as well paint mixtures that are cooler in tone and that mixed with a greater amount of lead white especially in the beach and sky areas. [link to technical report].
The paintings Monet executed in Sainte-Adresse in the summer of 1867 also differed from his earlier depictions in terms of their subject matter, for it was these pictures that comprised the artist’s “first sustained campaign of painting that involved tourism.” The viewer is immediately drawn to the visible artifacts of local life in The Beach at Sainte-Adresse—dark-sailed fishing boats drift in the water and other beached sea-crafts are surrounded by fishermen and some of their work accessories. Monet’s placement of the two groups of boats, however, frames two figures sitting on the shoreline: a man in a dark hat and suit looking out to sea or sky through his telescope accompanied by a woman wearing a yellow hat with a red ribbon. The woman’s dress—perhaps the composition’s brightest element—further draws the viewer’s gaze; one of the few areas of notably greater impasto in the painting, Monet constructs the garment out of a few strokes of the mostrelatively pure lead white paint that is used throughout the composition[link to technical report; perhaps one could use the zoomify tool here to zoom in on the couple; see images # 6.1 and 6.2]. Upon recognition of this couple—undoubtedly vacationers on account of their attire—the narrative of the painting changes. As aptly noted by Robert Herbert, “we are obliged to convert a traditional seacoast scene to one that has been invaded by modern life.”
New Observations
The Beach at Sainte-Adresse is often considered to be a pendant to Monet’s Regatta at Sainte-Adresse (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) [show comp. ill. of Regatta at Sainte-Adresse (see image #7); can we see both pictures on the screen at the same time?]. Though there is no evidence that the artist wanted to exhibit or sell these paintings as a pair, Regatta, also executed during the summer of 1867, is painted on a canvas very close in size (possibly custom ordered) to the Art Institute’s painting [link to technical report], and both depict the same portion of the Sainte-Adresse beach and include signs—notably a new villa on top of the hill at left and the presence of vacationers—of the physical and social transformations taking place at the resort destination. Many scholars have noted the complementary nature of these two paintings, however. Although each picture references the coexistence of local and tourist life at Sainte-Adresse, Beach is dominated by fishermen and dark-sailed working boats, while Regatta is filled with urban tourists and white-sailed leisure yachts. Furthermore, the former has a slightly sketchier paint quality and depicts the water at low tide with an overcast sky; on the contrary, the latter’s compositional elements seem more finished, and it portrays a sunny day at high tide.
Technical analysis undertaken in 2009 [link to technical report],however, reveals that Monet did not always intend for local life to dominate The Beach at Sainte-Adresse; in fact there are a number of indications that the Art Institute’s composition was originally much more similar to that of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s painting than has been previously recognized. Infrared reflectography reveals that in an earlier stage of the Art Institute’s canvas there was a group of three figures present on the shoreline at the right side of the painting—a male appears on the left, and a male/female couple on the right [show IR image and overlay; see images # 8 and 9]. Though it is difficult to determine the specific details of their clothing, it is clear that this is a group of city-dwelling vacationers: the woman, located in the center of the three, wears a long dress, and she and the two men accompanying her sport hats, the silhouettes of which look like those seen on the tourists in Regatta at Sainte-Adresse. Moreover, these figures face the water, much in the same way as the tourists depicted in the Metropolitan’s picture look out onto the English Channel to watch the regatta. Painted on a scale similar to or slightly larger than the three fishermen at left (which, it is important to note, were late additions to the painting), these well-dressed figures were clearly the prominent human element in the original composition.
IR and x-ray images of The Beach at Sainte-Adresse also indicate that in an earlier stage of the composition Monet included an additional cluster of boats in the water along the right side of the canvas [show x-ray and IR images and overlay; see images # 8, 9 and 10]. Though subsequently painted out, these earlier sea-crafts had sails that were similar in form and scale to the small- and medium-sized leisure yachts in the Metropolitan’s painting, although none equaled size of the largest boat in the foreground of Regatta. More importantly, however, is that the sails on the earlier boats in The Beach at Sainte-Adresse were white, indicating that they were pleasure boats, not dark-sailed, local fishing boats like those that appear in the final composition. By painting out these original sailboats and replacing them with working boats, Monet changed the narrative of the painting from one that foregrounded the leisure class to one that featured local life at Sainte-Adresse.
When Monet wrote to Bazille in June 1867, he described that “among my seascapes, I’m painting the regattas at Le Havre with lots of people on the beach and the ship lane covered with small sails.” While the Metropolitan’s painting fits neatly into this characterization, it has always been difficult to reconcile the subject matter of The Beach at Sainte-Adresse with Monet’s description since the painting’s subject matter has little to do with regattas or the tourist population that would gather to watch them. The presence of vacationers and white-sailed boats in an earlier stage of the painting suggests, however, that Monet indeed began the Art Institute’s picture within the framework that he outlined to Bazille and that he did not originally intend The Beach at Sainte-Adresse and Regatta at Sainte-Adresse to be as dichotomous as has often been believed. It was only at a later stage in his painting process that he deliberately complicated the meaning of The Beach at Sainte-Adresse and, more significantly, the dialogue it shares with the Metropolitan’s picture.
Technical Analysis
Artist: Claude Monet
Title (Date): The Beach at Sainte-Adresse (1867)
Owner/Dept: MMEPS
Museum Number: 1933.439
Structure: Oil on canvas
Size: 75.8 x 102.5 cm (29 13/16 x 40 5/16 in.)
Date Examined: 08/28/09
Conservator: Kim Muir
Signature/ Distinguishing Marks
Signature/Stamp:
Lower right, dark brown paint “Claude Monet” and dark reddish-purple paint “67” (MAC 15 and new photography of signature by Imaging] The different paints may indicate that the signature and date were added at different times.
Other:
Undated:
Label:
Location: backing board
Method: printed label with type-written text
Content: THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO/artist Claude Monet/title Beach at Sainte Adresse. 1867/medium oil on canvas/credit M/M L.L. Coburn Memorial Collection/acc. # 1933.439
Pre-1980:
Label:
Location: original location on masonite on verso; current location unknown
Method: unknown
Content: Sterling and Francine Clark Inst., “Jongkind and the Pre-Impressionists”, Dec. 17, 1976 – Feb. 13, 1977 (Temporary regis. No. 474/76) [current location of label unknown; this text from typescript in curatorial file]
Post-1980:
Label:
Location: original location on masonite on verso; current location unknown
Method: unknown
Content: Reunion des musées nationaux, Paris, “Homage à Monet,” Galeries nationales du Grand Palais, 8 Fevrier à 5 Mai 1980 [current location of label unknown; this text from typescript in curatorial file]
Label:
Location: stretcher back
Method: printed label with type-written text and ink stamp
Content: THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO/Chicago, Illinois 60603/Monet, Claude
Ink stamp: Inventory – 1980-1981
Label:
Location: backing board
Method: printed label with handwritten script
Content: Réunion des musées nationaux Paris/Titre de l’oeuvre: La plage de Sainte-Adresse/ Propriétaire: Art Institute of Chicago/NO du Catalogue: 136
(Mon 33.439 Ste Adresse_RMN label)
[label dates to the exhibition Impressionnisme: Les origines, 1859-1869, Paris, Galeries nationales du Grand Palais, April 19-August 8, 1994]
Label:
Location: backing board
Method: printed label
Content: 136/Claude Monet/La Plage de Saint-Adresse (The Beach at Sainte-Adresse)/Oil on canvas/The Art Institute of Chicago, Mr. and Mrs. Lewis L. Coburn Memorial Collection/ORIGINS OF IMPRESSIONISM/The Metropolitan Museum of Art/September 27, 1994-January 8, 1995
(Mon 33.439 Ste Adresse_Met label)
Label:
Location: backing board
Method: printed label
Content: The Art Institute of Chicago/”Claude Monet: 1840-1926”/July 14, 1995-November 26, 1995/Catalog: 12/The Beach at Sainte-Adresse/La Plage de Sainte-Adresse/The Art Institute of Chicago, Mr. and Mrs. Lewis Larned Coburn Memorial Collection (1933.439)
(Mon 33.439 Ste Adresse_AIC label 2)
Label:
Location: frame back
Method: printed label
Content: Arnold Wiggins & Sons/Limited/4 Bury Street/St. James’s/London SW1/Picture Frame Makers/Carvers and Gilders
Left: BY APPOINTMENT/TO H. M. QUEEN ELIZABETH II/PICTURE FRAME MAKERS
Right: BY APPOINTMENT/TO H. M. QUEEN ELIZABETH/THE QUEEN MOTHER/PICTURE FRAME MAKERS
(Mon 33.439 Ste Adresse_Wiggins and Sons label)
[label dates to 1999 according to invoice no. 9899 from Arnold Wiggins & Sons, Limited to the Art Institute dated August 19, 1999 (photocopy in curatorial file) and AIC Receipt of Object No. 43323, dated November 1, 1999 (photocopy in curatorial file)]
Label:
Location: backing board
Method: printed label with handwritten script
Content: THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO/Manet and the Sea/The Art Institute of Chicago: 10/20/03-1/4/04/Philadelphia Museum of Art: 2/15-5/30/04/Van Gogh Museum: 6/18 – 9/26/04/AIC/PMA/VGM/Cat. #: 97/Claude Monet, French; 1840-1926/THE BEACH AT SAINT-ADRESSE, 1867/oil on canvas/75 x 102 x cm., (29 ½ x 40 ¾ in.)/The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA/CRATE No 81
Label:
Location: backing board
Method: printed label
Content: THE CLEVELAND MUSEUM OF ART/11150 East Boulevard/Cleveland, Ohio 44106-1797/Monet in Normandy/(6/17/2006 – 5/28/2007)/Claude Monet (French, 1840-1926)/The Beach at Sainte-Adresse, 1867/Oil on canvas/1867/The Art Institute of Chicago, Mr. and Mrs. Lewis Larned Coburn Memorial Collection, 1933.439/CAT#: 05/1933.439
(Mon 33.439 Ste Adresse_CMA label)
Label:
Location: backing board
Method: printed label
Content: Royal Academy of Arts, London/Impressionists by the Sea/3 July 2007 to 30 September 2007/Claude Monet Key No. 37 Cat. No. 32/The Beach at Sainte-Adresse/The Art Institute of Chicago. Mr. and Mrs. Lewis Larned Coburn Memorial Collection, 1933.439
Structure and Technique
Support (Canvas)
Standard Format:
Possibly custom ordered; original foldover dimensions: approx. 75.0 x 101.0 cm; closest standard size is no. 40 paysage [link to glossary] (73.0 x 100.0 cm)
Weave:
Plain weave, 19.7V x 23.0H thr/cm1
Canvas characteristics:
There is very mild scalloping along the bottom, left and right edges, with slightly more pronounced scalloping at the top edge.
Stretching:
Current stretching: When the painting was lined in 1973, the original dimensions were increased on all sides (see Treatment History).
Original stretching: Uncertain.
Stretcher/strainer:
Current stretcher: 4-member redwood spring stretcher. Depth: 3.5 cm
Original stretcher: Uncertain. The 1973 treatment report notes that the new spring stretcher replaced a “6-piece stretcher with crosspiece” (see Treatment History). Since the painting had been glue-paste lined at an unknown date prior to 1957 (see Treatment History), it is uncertain whether the 6-piece stretcher was the original or dated to the glue lining. However, vertical stretcher bar cracks near the center of the painting indicate that the original stretcher was 5-membered with a vertical crossbar only.
Manufacturer’s/dealer’s marks:
None
Preparatory Layers
Sizing:
Not determined
Ground Application/Texture:
There appears to be two preparatory layers (MIC 44). The first layer extends to the edges of the left, bottom and right tacking margins, but stops short of the top tacking margin edge (approx. 0.5 cm of unprimed canvas present) (top tacking edge). This suggests that the canvas was cut down from a larger piece of commercially primed fabric on the left, bottom and right edges. The top edge probably corresponds to the edge of the larger canvas that was tacked to the wooden frame during priming. Over this, there seems to be a second ground layer which is present on the original picture plane only. This indicates that the second ground layer was applied after the canvas was stretched and may have been applied by the artist or by the color merchant at the artist’s request. The preparation on the picture plane appears to be thicker, filling more of the canvas texture, than on the tacking margins.
Color:
Direct comparison of the colors of the two ground layers is hindered by the fact that there is almost continuous paint loss and retouching around all of the original foldovers, and also because the tacking margins are discolored with dirt and abraded. However, the color of the first ground layer appears to be off-white, whereas the second ground layer appears to have a warm beige tone and contains dark pigment particles which are visible under magnification (MIC 11).
Materials/Composition:
First ground layer: lead white with traces of an iron oxide containing pigment and barium sulfate1 in oil (estimated).
Second ground layer: lead white with traces of an iron oxide containing pigment and barium sulfate2 in oil (estimated).
Compositional planning/ Underdrawing/painted sketch
Extent/character:
No underdrawing was detected with IR; however, some dark, particulate material was observed between the ground and paint layers in localized areas. For example, to the left of the heads of the left-hand and central foreground figures, there are a few concentrated areas of black particles deposited on the highpoints of the canvas texture (MIC 24, MIC 38).
Medium/technique:
N/A
Revisions:
(see Paint Layer)
Paint Layer
Application/technique and artist’s revision:
The painting has been worked up in several stages, with changes to the composition outlined below. Most color areas seem to consist of fairly simple mixtures of two or three pigments. The warm beige tone of the second ground layer remains visible at breaks in the brushwork in the beach, water and distant landscape (MIC 46, MAC 18). The paint is generally applied in thin, opaque layers, with localized wet-in-wet mixing of colors (MAC 9, MAC 19). There are some areas of more textural paint application with localized low impasto, particularly in the paint layers containing significant amounts of lead white, such as the lighter strokes of the beach and the white strokes of the seated couple at the shoreline (MAC 13, MAC 14). Several final touches are applied with a relatively dry brush that skips over the surface of the underlying paint (MAC 21).
There are significant compositional changes on the right side of the painting. Infrared reflectography reveals that an earlier version of the composition included three figures on the shoreline near the right edge (IR and/or overlay). The group, which comprises a male figure on the left and a female/male couple on the right, appears to be facing the water and is painted on a similar or slightly larger scale than the three fishermen in the foreground of the finished painting. Some brushwork related to these figures is visible in the X-radiograph [link to glossary] and raking light images (XR flat, overlay).
Several forms at the right side of the painting, which were later painted out, indicate that the artist experimented with the size and position of the boats in this area. In the X-radiograph, two larger sails (presumably containing significant lead white based on the radio-opacity [link to glossary]) are visible (XR flat). There is a smaller sailboat within the area of the larger left-hand sail, and another smaller sail possibly associated with a second smaller sailboat to the right of that (these also appear to contain lead white paint). At the extreme right edge, there appears to be another sailboat, closer in scale to the larger sails seen to the left. This is more difficult to discern in the X-radiograph, but is evident in the IR image (IR) [link to glossary]. The artist also seems to have painted out some smaller boats along the right horizon, as well as one slightly closer to the shoreline which appears to carry two passengers (IR, overlay).
The position and size of the central group of boats on the shore were also altered. In the X-ray image, the front and middle boats are smaller, and the front boat appears to have been positioned at more of an angle (overlay). It is possible that the farthest boat was not part of the initial composition since the beach appears to be more worked up in the area underneath the front end of the boat. Adjustments were also made to the three foreground figures at left. These figures, as well as the adjacent boats, are painted on top of the beach, indicating that they were later additions to the painting. The changes to the figures seem to have involved either minor shifts in position or changes in the size of the figures and are visible around the blue jacket of the left figure, the proper left shoulder and arm of the center figure and the proper left side of the right-hand figure. On the left and right edges of the left-hand figure, for example, it is evident that the artist wiped away the still-wet blue paint of the jacket, leaving some traces in the recesses of the underlying paint layers of the beach. He later applied a few strokes of light blue and grey paint to cover these paint residues (MIC 25, 31 or MAC 6). This was not done precisely and some of the blue paint residues remain visible to the unaided eye.
Comparison of the finished painting with the X-ray image also shows some changes in the buildings on the left side of the composition (overlay). For example, the large structure at the top of the hill was originally smaller and positioned lower on the hill. To the immediate right, the two brownish gray buildings appear to have been added over top of the sky, as does the large house to the right of the spire. Slight adjustments may also have been made to the spire.
Painting tools:
Brushes, including 1-2 cm wide flat brushes and smaller, pointed brush for fine details like the ropes.
Palette:
XRF [link to glossary] analysis indicates the presence of: lead white, bone/ivory black, zinc chromate (zinc yellow), iron oxide containing pigments such as red and yellow ochre, lead chromate (chrome yellow), vermilion, cobalt blue, chromium oxide containing green such as viridian, and emerald green.
Binding Media:
Oil (estimated)
Other Materials:
Surface Finish
Varnish layer/media:
The current synthetic varnish was applied in 1973 (see Treatment History). There are residues of yellowed varnish visible in the recesses of the paint texture. Under ultraviolet light, these residues exhibit the bright yellow fluorescence characteristic of natural resins like dammar.
Origin:
A natural resin varnish was removed in 1973; its origin is uncertain.
Frame
Design/Origin:
Current frame (as of March 2000): 1999 reproduction of French, 19th century, Louis XVI revival frame, with composition pearl sight moulding, egg and dart, and pin and ribbon twist back moulding. Constructed by Arnold Wiggins and Sons, 1999
Previous frame: A 1960-70 American reproduction of a French Regence frame, gilded with a grey decape finish.
Previous Treatment/Conservation History
The earliest examination report in the conservation file, which dates to 1957, indicates that the painting was already glue paste lined by that date. In 1973, the following treatments were carried out: discolored surface films and overpaint around the edges of the painting and over the wide aperture drying cracks in the foreground boats and left-hand figure were removed with solvents; remnants of overpaint were removed mechanically; the painting was faced with mulberry fiber paper and starch paste, and the old lining fabric and glue adhesive were removed mechanically; lining was carried out with Belgian linen and a wax resin adhesive on the vacuum hot table; the painting was restretched on a new redwood spring stretcher slightly larger than the composition, leaving a small, unpainted border around the perimeter (the changes to the dimensions are as follows: in the pre-treatment notes, the work measured 74.6 x 101.0 cm, the work currently measures 75.8 x 102.5 cm); an isolating varnish of polyvinyl acetate AYAA was applied; the painting was inpainted and the final varnish, consisting of a layer of methacrylate resin L-46 and a layer of polyvinyl acetate AYAA, was applied.
Technical Summary:
Monet’s Beach at Sainte-Adresse is painted on a commercially primed canvas to which a second ground layer has been applied in the area of the picture plane only. The warm beige tone of this second ground layer remains visible at the edges of the painting, but has also been incorporated into areas of the composition where it is left exposed at breaks in the brushwork. The beach, for example, is worked up in strokes of lead white rich paint that are individually toned to produce warmer or cooler shades of grey by the addition of small amounts of cobalt blue, red and yellow ochre, and bone black. Where the artist-applied ground is visible, its perceived hue depends largely on the color of the adjacent brushstrokes. On the distant shoreline, exposed areas of warm beige ground provide the color of the sand. The paint of the sky, on the other hand, comprises a more continuous layer that completely covers the ground.
It seems that the beach, water and sky were built up simultaneously, leaving reserves for the central group of boats on the shore and the distant townscape. Although the water and sky were painted in to some extent underneath the dark-sailed boats, their relative radio-transparency [link to glossary] indicates that they were added to the composition early on. Technical examination has revealed that, at one point, Monet included three figures and a group of sailboats and smaller marine craft at the right side of the composition. The sailboats appear to contain lead white based on their appearance in the X-ray image. It seems that the artist painted out these boats and figures before adding the group of fishermen and boats on the left side. These latter elements were painted over top of the mostly finished beach, indicating that they were part of a later painting stage. Other more minor alterations are evident in the size and position of the central group of boats on the beach and the three foreground figures.
In the painting, the artist uses a variety of brushwork, including thin, opaque strokes of color, localized areas of thicker, more textural, wet-in-wet application, and dry brush application. Areas of “artist retouching” along the right horizon and around the three fishermen are among the final elements added to the painting and seem to be used to block out traces of the revisions made in those areas.
Condition Summary:
The work is in good condition overall. The canvas is wax-resin lined. It is flat and stretched taut on the stretcher. There is some flattening of thicker areas of paint as a result of the heat and pressure used in the lining procedure. Localized paint loss, cracking and abrasion are present around all of the original foldovers, due, in part, to the flattening of the tacking margins during lining. The original tacking margin edges are deteriorated and may have been trimmed in places; there are losses in the fabric at the bottom left and bottom right corners. The paint layer is in good condition, with only a few tiny paint losses. There is a general network of light cracks over the paint surface. Stretcher bar cracks are most visible in the area of the original vertical crossbar and the right stretcher bar. Wide-aperture drying cracks are present in some of the foreground figures and boats. There are several diagonal, curved lines in the sky, visible on the surface of the painting, and more clearly in the X-ray image. These appear to be impressions that were made when the paint was still soft. There are a few small spots of retouching in the sky related to disruptions in the paint in these areas. Retouching has been applied to almost the entire perimeter of the painting, over the losses at the original foldovers. Residues of discolored natural resin varnish are visible throughout the paint surface. This is mainly on a microscopic level, but in some areas, such as the blue paint of the torso of the left-hand foreground figure, it is visible to the unaided eye. There are numerous localized areas of wax residue from the lining adhesive where it was pushed through cracks and small losses in the ground and paint layers. Fibers, probably from the facing paper and/or cotton swabs, are visible microscopically over the surface. The work has a relatively matte, synthetic varnish. fig. .2
Examination Techniques:
XR (August 2009, scanned and composited)
IR (Inframetrics Aug. 2009; Fuji Aug. 2009)
UV (Fuji Aug. 2009)
Raking light: overall, showing compositional changes at right side (Fuji Aug. 2009)
Microscopy and micro-photographs (Olympus DP71 Microscope Camera Aug. 2009)
XRF (Bruker/Keymaster TRACeR III-V Aug. 2009)
Provenance
I and the artilleryman, seated on the step of the drinking fountain, made a very passable meal upon what we had brought with us. Patrols of soldiers--here no longer hussars, but grenadiers in white--were warning people to move now or to take refuge in their cellars as soon as the firing began. We saw as we crossed the railway bridge that a growing crowd of people had assembled in and about the railway station, and the swarming platform was piled with boxes and packages. The ordinary traffic had been stopped, I believe, in order to allow of the passage of troops and guns to Chertsey, and I have heard since that a savage struggle occurred for places in the special trains that were put on at a later hour.
We remained at Weybridge until midday, and at that hour we found ourselves at the place near Shepperton Lock where the Wey and Thames join. Part of the time we spent helping two old women to pack a little cart. The Wey has a treble mouth, and at this point boats are to be hired, and there was a ferry across the river. On the Shepperton side was an inn with a lawn, and beyond that the tower of Shepperton Church--it has been replaced by a spire--rose above the trees.
Here we found an excited and noisy crowd of fugitives. As yet the flight had not grown to a panic, but there were already far more people than all the boats going to and fro could enable to cross. People came panting along under heavy burdens; one husband and wife were even carrying a small outhouse door between them, with some of their household goods piled thereon. One man told us he meant to try to get away from Shepperton station.
There was a lot of shouting, and one man was even jesting. The idea people seemed to have here was that the Martians were simply formidable human beings, who might attack and sack the town, to be certainly destroyed in the end. Every now and then people would glance nervously across the Wey, at the meadows towards Chertsey, but everything over there was still.
Across the Thames, except just where the boats landed, everything was quiet, in vivid contrast with the Surrey side. The people who landed there from the boats went tramping off down the lane. The big ferryboat had just made a journey. Three or four soldiers stood on the lawn of the inn, staring and jesting at the fugitives, without offering to help. The inn was closed, as it was now within prohibited hours.
"What's that?" cried a boatman, and "Shut up, you fool!" said a man near me to a yelping dog. Then the sound came again, this time from the direction of Chertsey, a muffled thud--the sound of a gun.
The fighting was beginning. Almost immediately unseen batteries across the river to our right, unseen because of the trees, took up the chorus, firing heavily one after the other. A woman screamed. Everyone stood arrested by the sudden stir of battle, near us and yet invisible to us. Nothing was to be seen save flat meadows, cows feeding unconcernedly for the most part, and silvery pollard willows motionless in the warm sunlight.
"The sojers'll stop 'em," said a woman beside me, doubtfully. A haziness rose over the treetops.
Then suddenly we saw a rush of smoke far away up the river, a puff of smoke that jerked up into the air and hung; and forthwith the ground heaved under foot and a heavy explosion shook the air, smashing two or three windows in the houses near, and leaving us astonished.
"Here they are!" shouted a man in a blue jersey. "Yonder! D'yer see them? Yonder!"
A heading
"An hour," said Ahab, standing rooted in his boat's stern; and he gazed beyond the whale's place, towards the dim blue spaces and wide wooing vacancies to leeward. It was only an instant; for again his eyes seemed whirling round in his head as he swept the watery circle. The breeze now freshened; the sea began to swell.
"The birds!—the birds!" cried Tashtego.
In long Indian file, as when herons take wing, the white birds were now all flying towards Ahab's boat; and when within a few yards began fluttering over the water there, wheeling round and round, with joyous, expectant cries. Their vision was keener than man's; Ahab could discover no sign in the sea. But suddenly as he peered down and down into its depths, he profoundly saw a white living spot no bigger than a white weasel, with wonderful celerity uprising, and magnifying as it rose, till it turned, and then there were plainly revealed two long crooked rows of white, glistening teeth, floating up from the undiscoverable bottom. It was Moby Dick's open mouth and scrolled jaw; his vast, shadowed bulk still half blending with the blue of the sea. The glittering mouth yawned beneath the boat like an open-doored marble tomb; and giving one sidelong sweep with his steering oar, Ahab whirled the craft aside from this tremendous apparition. Then, calling upon Fedallah to change places with him, went forward to the bows, and seizing Perth's harpoon, commanded his crew to grasp their oars and stand by to stern. fig. .3
Now, by reason of this timely spinning round the boat upon its axis, its bow, by anticipation, was made to face the whale's head while yet under water. But as if perceiving this stratagem, Moby Dick, with that malicious intelligence ascribed to him, sidelingly transplanted himself, as it were, in an instant, shooting his pleated head lengthwise beneath the boat.fig. .3Through and through; through every plank and each rib, it thrilled for an instant, the whale obliquely lying on his back, in the manner of a biting shark, slowly and feelingly taking its bows full within his mouth, so that the long, narrow, scrolled lower jaw curled high up into the open air, and one of the teeth caught in a row-lock. The bluish pearl-white of the inside of the jaw was within six inches of Ahab's head, and reached higher than that. In this attitude the White Whale now shook the slight cedar as a mildly cruel cat her mouse. With unastonished eyes Fedallah gazed, and crossed his arms; but the tiger-yellow crew were tumbling over each other's heads to gain the uttermost stern.
And now, while both elastic gunwales were springing in and out, as the whale dallied with the doomed craft in this devilish way; and from his body being submerged beneath the boat, he could not be darted at from the bows, for the bows were almost inside of him, as it were; and while the other boats involuntarily paused, as before a quick crisis impossible to withstand, then it was that monomaniac Ahab, furious with this tantalizing vicinity of his foe, which placed him all alive and helpless in the very jaws he hated; frenzied with all this, he seized the long bone with his naked hands, and wildly strove to wrench it from its gripe. As now he thus vainly strove, the jaw slipped from him; the frail gunwales bent in, collapsed, and snapped, as both jaws, like an enormous shears, sliding further aft, bit the craft completely in twain, and locked themselves fast again in the sea, midway between the two floating wrecks. These floated aside, the broken ends drooping, the crew at the stern-wreck clinging to the gunwales, and striving to hold fast to the oars to lash them across.fig. .3At that preluding moment, ere the boat was yet snapped, Ahab, the first to perceive the whale's intent, by the crafty upraising of his head, a movement that loosed his hold for the time; at that moment his hand had made one final effort to push the boat out of the bite. But only slipping further into the whale's mouth, and tilting over sideways as it slipped, the boat had shaken off his hold on the jaw; spilled him out of it, as he leaned to the push; and so he fell flat-faced upon the sea.fig. .3
Ripplingly withdrawing from his prey, Moby Dick now lay at a little distance, vertically thrusting his oblong white head up and down in the billows; and at the same time slowly revolving his whole spindled body; so that when his vast wrinkled forehead rose—some twenty or more feet out of the water—the now rising swells, with all their confluent waves, dazzlingly broke against it; vindictively tossing their shivered spray still higher into the air.* So, in a gale, the but half baffled Channel billows only recoil from the base of the Eddystone, triumphantly to overleap its summit with their scud.
Exhibition History
That night, too, there was another jetting out of gas from the distant planet. I saw it. A reddish flash at the edge, the slightest projection of the outline just as the chronometer struck midnight; and at that I told Ogilvy and he took my place. The night was warm and I was thirsty, and I went stretching my legs clumsily and feeling my way in the darkness, to the little table where the siphon stood, while Ogilvy exclaimed at the streamer of gas that came out towards us.
That night another invisible missile started on its way to the earth from Mars, just a second or so under twenty-four hours after the first one. I remember how I sat on the table there in the blackness, with patches of green and crimson swimming before my eyes. I wished I had a light to smoke by, little suspecting the meaning of the minute gleam I had seen and all that it would presently bring me. Ogilvy watched till one, and then gave it up; and we lit the lantern and walked over to his house. Down below in the darkness were Ottershaw and Chertsey and all their hundreds of people, sleeping in peace.
He was full of speculation that night about the condition of Mars, and scoffed at the vulgar idea of its having inhabitants who were signalling us. His idea was that meteorites might be falling in a heavy shower upon the planet, or that a huge volcanic explosion was in progress. He pointed out to me how unlikely it was that organic evolution had taken the same direction in the two adjacent planets.
"The chances against anything manlike on Mars are a million to one," he said.
Hundreds of observers saw the flame that night and the night after about midnight, and again the night after; and so for ten nights, a flame each night. Why the shots ceased after the tenth no one on earth has attempted to explain. It may be the gases of the firing caused the Martians inconvenience. Dense clouds of smoke or dust, visible through a powerful telescope on earth as little grey, fluctuating patches, spread through the clearness of the planet's atmosphere and obscured its more familiar features.
One night (the first missile then could scarcely have been 10,000,000 miles away) I went for a walk with my wife. It was starlight and I explained the Signs of the Zodiac to her, and pointed out Mars, a bright dot of light creeping zenithward, towards which so many telescopes were pointed. It was a warm night. Coming home, a party of excursionists from Chertsey or Isleworth passed us singing and playing music. There were lights in the upper windows of the houses as the people went to bed. From the railway station in the distance came the sound of shunting trains, ringing and rumbling, softened almost into melody by the distance. My wife pointed out to me the brightness of the red, green, and yellow signal lights hanging in a framework against the sky. It seemed so safe and tranquil. fig. .4 fig. .5
Then came the night of the first falling star. It was seen early in the morning, rushing over Winchester eastward, a line of flame high in the atmosphere. Hundreds must have seen it, and taken it for an ordinary falling star. Albin described it as leaving a greenish streak behind it that glowed for some seconds. Denning, our greatest authority on meteorites, stated that the height of its first appearance was about ninety or one hundred miles. It seemed to him that it fell to earth about one hundred miles east of him.
I was at home at that hour and writing in my study; and although my French windows face towards Ottershaw and the blind was up (for I loved in those days to look up at the night sky), I saw nothing of it. Yet this strangest of all things that ever came to earth from outer space must have fallen while I was sitting there, visible to me had I only looked up as it passed. Some of those who saw its flight say it travelled with a hissing sound. I myself heard nothing of that. Many people in Berkshire, Surrey, and Middlesex must have seen the fall of it, and, at most, have thought that another meteorite had descended. No one seems to have troubled to look for the fallen mass that night.
But very early in the morning poor Ogilvy, who had seen the shooting star and who was persuaded that a meteorite lay somewhere on the common between Horsell, Ottershaw, and Woking, rose early with the idea of finding it. Find it he did, soon after dawn, and not far from the sand pits. An enormous hole had been made by the impact of the projectile, and the sand and gravel had been flung violently in every direction over the heath, forming heaps visible a mile and a half away. The heather was on fire eastward, and a thin blue smoke rose against the dawn.
References
Therefore, in his other moods, symbolize whatever grand or gracious thing he will by whiteness, no man can deny that in its profoundest idealized significance it calls up a peculiar apparition to the soul.
But though without dissent this point be fixed, how is mortal man to account for it? To analyse it, would seem impossible. Can we, then, by the citation of some of those instances wherein this thing of whiteness—though for the time either wholly or in great part stripped of all direct associations calculated to impart to it aught fearful, but nevertheless, is found to exert over us the same sorcery, however modified;—can we thus hope to light upon some chance clue to conduct us to the hidden cause we seek?
Let us try. But in a matter like this, subtlety appeals to subtlety, and without imagination no man can follow another into these halls. And though, doubtless, some at least of the imaginative impressions about to be presented may have been shared by most men, yet few perhaps were entirely conscious of them at the time, and therefore may not be able to recall them now.
Why to the man of untutored ideality, who happens to be but loosely acquainted with the peculiar character of the day, does the bare mention of Whitsuntide marshal in the fancy such long, dreary, speechless processions of slow-pacing pilgrims, down-cast and hooded with new-fallen snow? Or, to the unread, unsophisticated Protestant of the Middle American States, why does the passing mention of a White Friar or a White Nun, evoke such an eyeless statue in the soul?
Or what is there apart from the traditions of dungeoned warriors and kings (which will not wholly account for it) that makes the White Tower of London tell so much more strongly on the imagination of an untravelled American, than those other storied structures, its neighbors—the Byward Tower, or even the Bloody? And those sublimer towers, the White Mountains of New Hampshire, whence, in peculiar moods, comes that gigantic ghostliness over the soul at the bare mention of that name, while the thought of Virginia's Blue Ridge is full of a soft, dewy, distant dreaminess? Or why, irrespective of all latitudes and longitudes, does the name of the White Sea exert such a spectralness over the fancy, while that of the Yellow Sea lulls us with mortal thoughts of long lacquered mild afternoons on the waves, fig. .6 followed by the gaudiest and yet sleepiest of sunsets? Or, to choose a wholly unsubstantial instance, purely addressed to the fancy, why, in reading the old fairy tales of Central Europe, does "the tall pale man" of the Hartz forests, whose changeless pallor unrustlingly glides through the green of the groves—why is this phantom more terrible than all the whooping imps of the Blocksburg?
Nor is it, altogether, the remembrance of her cathedral-toppling earthquakes; nor the stampedoes of her frantic seas; nor the tearlessness of arid skies that never rain; nor the sight of her wide field of leaning spires, wrenched cope-stones, and crosses all adroop (like canted yards of anchored fleets); and her suburban avenues of house-walls lying over upon each other, as a tossed pack of cards;—it is not these things alone which make tearless Lima, the strangest, saddest city thou can'st see. For Lima has taken the white veil; and there is a higher horror in this whiteness of her woe. Old as Pizarro, this whiteness keeps her ruins for ever new; admits not the cheerful greenness of complete decay; spreads over her broken ramparts the rigid pallor of an apoplexy that fixes its own distortions.
I know that, to the common apprehension, this phenomenon of whiteness is not confessed to be the prime agent in exaggerating the terror of objects otherwise terrible; nor to the unimaginative mind is there aught of terror in those appearances whose awfulness to another mind almost solely consists in this one phenomenon, especially when exhibited under any form at all approaching to muteness or universality. What I mean by these two statements may perhaps be respectively elucidated by the following examples.
First: The mariner, when drawing nigh the coasts of foreign lands, if by night he hear the roar of breakers, starts to vigilance, and feels just enough of trepidation to sharpen all his faculties; but under precisely similar circumstances, let him be called from his hammock to view his ship sailing through a midnight sea of milky whiteness—as if from encircling headlands shoals of combed white bears were swimming round him, then he feels a silent, superstitious dread; the shrouded phantom of the whitened waters is horrible to him as a real ghost; in vain the lead assures him he is still off soundings; heart and helm they both go down; he never rests till blue water is under him again. Yet where is the mariner who will tell thee, "Sir, it was not so much the fear of striking hidden rocks, as the fear of that hideous whiteness that so stirred me?"
