Giverny: Road Looking West toward Church

Giverny: Road Looking West toward Church is one of two paintings by Dawson Dawson-Watson in the Terra Foundation collection showing a streetscape in the rural village of Giverny, in Normandy, France. This view looks west along the principal street, the Route du haut (the village's main street, now the Rue Claude Monet). On the right-hand side, the steeple of the eleventh-century church of Sainte Radegonde rises in the distance. The three dormer windows projecting from the roof of a nearer structure identify it as the Hôtel Baudy, the principal lodging for many of the visiting artists, including Dawson-Watson, who made Giverny an international artists' colony beginning in the mid-1880s. Scaffolding covers the inn's façade, perhaps for the construction of the two small balconies added just under the end dormers sometime before 1900. A figure in white seated against the red brick façade of an adjoining building and two sketchy figures on the road in the distance underscore the bleached, blank emptiness of the street as it more than fills the foreground. The viewer stands in the shade cast by an unseen structure, probably part of Mme. Baudy's house, which was rented to artists.

Dawson-Watson spent some five years as a resident of Giverny during the formative years of the colony. Inspired by the works of the village's most famous inhabitant, Claude Monet (1840–1926), many of Giverny's visiting artists adopted aspects of impressionism, the painting of local, outdoor subjects rapidly and on site in bright colors and rough brushstrokes to capture the optical effects of natural light and atmosphere. In Giverny: Road Looking West toward Church, the broad expanse of the street, with its pale surface, magnifies the blinding effect of bright natural light, against which the shadows of buildings at the left and in the foreground appear blue and purple. The artist's rapid application of paint as he worked on-site is especially evident in the foreground shadow, in which the pale underpainting is visible between the rapid marks of an almost-dry brush. Like the scaffolding temporarily defacing the Hôtel Baudy, these shadows are records of a particular moment in time, demonstrating the impressionist emphasis on the transient nature of reality.

The American artists who worked in Giverny in the late 1880s made its surrounding landscape their principal subject, but they also occasionally painted the village's streets. In addition to Dawson-Watson's two street scenes, the Terra Foundation's collection includes two other such examples: Thomas Buford Meteyard's Giverny, Moonlight (TF 1989.24), probably painted about the same time as Dawson-Watson's work, and Theodore Robinson's The Wedding March (TF 1999.127), which shows the wedding party of American artist Theodore Butler and his bride Suzanne Hoschedé walking from the mairie (town hall) toward the church, a route that would take them along the stretch pictured by Dawson-Watson a year or two earlier.

Impressions de toujours: les peintres américains en France, 1865–1915 (Lasting Impressions: American Painters in France, 1865–1915), Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France (organizer). Venue: Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France, June 1–November 1, 1992; April 1–October 31, 1993; April 1–October 30, 1994; April 1–October 31, 1995. [exh. cat.]

American Artists and the French Experience, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizer). Venue: Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, April 12–August 27, 1997.

American Artists and the Paris Experience, 1880–1910, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizer). Venue: Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, November 22, 1997–March 8, 1998.

Giverny: intérieurs, extérieurs (Giverny: Inside and Out), Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France (organizer). Venues: Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France, April 1–October 31, 2000.

Permanent collection installation, Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France, April 1–July 1, 2001.

D'une colonie à une collection: le Musée d'Art Américain Giverny fête ses dix ans (From a Colony to a Collection: Celebrating the Tenth Anniversary of the Musée d'Art Américain Giverny), Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France (organizer). Venue: Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France, March 30–June 16, 2002 (on exhibit partial extended run: September 13–November 30, 2002).

En Plein Air: American Painters in Giverny, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizer). Venue: Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, March 8–May 25, 2003.

Impressionist Giverny: A Colony of Artists, 1885–1915, Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France (organizer). Venues: Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France, April 1–July 1, 2007; San Diego Museum of Art, San Diego, CA, July 21–October 14, 2007. [exh. cat.]

Impressionist Giverny: The Americans, 1885-1915, Selections from the Terra Foundation for American Art, Terra Foundation for American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizer). Venues: Florence Griswold Museum of Art, Old Lyme, Connecticut, May 3–July 27, 2008; Albany Institute of History & Art, Albany, New York, August 23, 2008–January 4, 2009.

Monet and the Artists of Giverny: The Beginning of American Impressionism, The Bunkamura Museum of Art, Tokyo, Japan with the Terra Foundation for American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizers). Venues: Kitakyushu Municipal Museum of Art, Kitakyushu, Japan, October 9–November 28, 2010; The Bunkamura Museum of Art, Tokyo, Japan, December 7, 2010–February 17, 2011; The Okayama Prefectural Museum of Art, Okayama, Japan, February 25–April 10, 2011. [exh. cat.]

Important Recent Acquisitions: Late 19th and Early 20th Century American Paintings Including Selections from the Collection of Mrs. Joan Patterson. (exh. cat., Hirschl & Adler Galleries, Inc.). New York: Hirschl & Adler Galleries, Inc., 1972. Pl. 28. (black & white).

Gerdts, William H. et al. Lasting Impressions: American Painters in France, 1865–1915. (exh. cat., Musée d'Art Américain Giverny). Chicago, Illinois: Terra Foundation for the Arts, 1992. Text pp. 57, 169; pl. 25, p. 171 (color).

Gerdts, William H. et al. Impressions de toujours: les peintres américains en France, 1865–1915. (exh. cat., Musée d'Art Américain Giverny). Chicago, Illinois: Terra Foundation for the Arts, 1992. Text pp. 57, 169; pl. 25, p. 171 (color).

Gerdts, William H. Monet's Giverny: An Impressionist Colony. New York: Abbeville Press, 1993. Pl. 80, p. 89 (color).

Joyes, Claire. The Taste of Giverny: At Home with Monet and the American Impressionists. Paris, France: Flammarion, 2000. Ill. p. 19 (color).

Bourguignon, Katherine M. et al. Impressionist Giverny: A Colony of Artists, 1885–1915. (exh. cat. Musée d'Art Américain Giverny). Chicago, Illinois: Terra Foundation for American Art, 2007. Text p. 205 (checklist); cat. p. 115 (color).

Bourguignon, Katherine M., Shunsuke Kijima and Sanjiro Minamikawa. Monet and the Artists of Giverny: The Beginning of American Impressionism. (exh. cat. Kitakyushu Municipal Museum of Art, The Bunkamura Museum of Art, Tokyo, and The Okayama Prefectural Museum of Art). Fukuoka, Japan: The Nishinippon Shimbun, 2010. Text cat. no. 52, pp. 100 (in Japanese), 186 (in English); ill. p. 100 (color).

“Giverny: Road Looking West Toward Church.” Dawson Dawson-Watson Catalogue Raisonné Project. Last modified 2016. Accessed February 26, 2016. http://dawsondawson-watson.org/art/giverny-road-looking-west-toward-church/. Ill. (color).