Antibes Seen from the Plateau Notre-Dame

In early 1888, Monet spent three months at Antibes on the French Riviera, producing thirty-nine canvases of the ancient Mediterranean town seen across the bay. This view from the Plateau Notre-Dame presents the walled town and the Alps beyond bathed in the intense southern light that shocked Monet after years of northern grey skies. The Antibes series was exhibited at Théodore Duret's gallery in Paris to great acclaim and marked Monet's first systematic exploration of Mediterranean luminosity. The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, holds one of the finest versions, notable for the crystalline clarity of the water and the snow-capped peaks dissolving in heat haze.

Monet uses a brighter, more saturated palette than his Normandy work — cobalt blues, warm ochres, and vivid pinks — to capture Mediterranean light. The town is rendered in small, precisely shaped strokes, while the water and sky are more freely swept. The composition uses the diagonal of the shoreline to frame the distant architecture.