Vue de Vétheuil View of Vétheuil

The View of Vétheuil is one of the first acquisitions of modern painting made by the new director Hugo von Tschudi in Paris. Julius Meier-Graefe saw the picture in March 1898 in the newly arranged halls of the Nationalgalerie and noted: “This Monet seems to me the most valuable of the French paintings. It is a very rare picture;... it is a delicate Monet, but in its almost Rococo-like delicateness of line and color it has all the irresistible infallibility of all the paintings by this master.” By describing it in unusual terms as “Rococo-like” Meier-Graefe grasped a characteristic feature of Monet ’s art around 1880.