View of Ventimiglia

Ventimiglia, just inside the Italian border with France, is close to Bordighera, the picturesque Italian seaside resort town where Claude Monet stayed for three months during 1884. This is one of 45 paintings that he painted during his visit.

Monet’s daily letters to Alice Hoschedé, his companion and future wife, are a marvellous record of the exhilaration and frustration he experienced in his attempt to understand how to capture the heat, the brilliant light and the luxuriant vegetation of the Mediterranean coast.

He described 'slaving away on six paintings a day. I'm giving myself a hard time over it as I haven't yet managed to capture the colour of this landscape; there are moments when I am appalled at the colours I am having to use. I'm afraid that what I am doing is just dreadful.’

Monet realised that the colours he needed – ‘a palette of diamonds and jewels because of the blues and pinks’ – would make people ‘exclaim at their untruthfulness’.

Image description: Landscape featuring blue green lake, with cluster of buildings suggesting the town of Ventimiglia to the right centre. Mountains are on the horizon above, and shrubby green and purple bushes can be seen in the foreground. Sky is a deep blue at the top, fading to a lighter blue moving down towards the mountain range.

Credit: Presented by the Trustees of the Hamilton Bequest, 1943