Monet's Vétheuil in Winter (Frick Diptych, 8)

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.\nSince 2009, Olafur Eliasson has produced a large number of paintings collectively known as the Colour Experiments. Painted on round canvases, often with holes at the center, these paintings suggest alternative color wheels to those taught in schools. For Colour experiment no. 109, a color-calibrated photograph was made of Monet’s Vétheuil in Winter, which resulted in a high-quality print that was sent to Studio Olafur Eliasson, in Berlin. Eliasson and the painter Sylvain Brugier then abstracted the palette from the subject matter, spreading the colors out onto the surface of the round canvas in a gradient color wheel, transitioning from dark to light. The circumference of Eliasson’s painting is large enough to contain the original painting by Monet, embracing it within the color wheel. The artwork was two years in the making.\nNew volume in the Frick Diptych series features an essay by Susan Grace Galassi, curator emerita at The Frick Collection, paired with a contribution from renowned artist Olafur Eliasson
Claude Monet’s Vétheuil in Winter (1878-79), painted during the artist’s first winter in the village, depicts his new home on the Seine, seen from the opposite bank of the river. Monet’s two and a half years in Vétheuil, a small farming community northwest of Paris, saw two severe winters, the inspiration for this masterpiece. The Frick’s painting is a key work by Monet, in the new “impressionist” style, painted only 4 years after the first Impressionist show in Paris; it was Monet’s painting called Impression, Sunrise that led to the term impressionism being coined.
Susan Grace Galassi has written an insightful and engaging essay about Monet’s difficult but productive time in Vétheuil, which saw the death of his wife Camille. The Frick's Monet painting, the only work by the artist in the collection, is the basis for other significant canvases made during his stay in the village in both winter and summer. Galassi's essay is accompanied by a text and intriguing new work—Colour experiment no. 109—by the artist Olafur Eliasson, created in response to the Monet painting. Eliasson’s work will be shown at the Frick next to the painting that inspired it.