Monet's wish to become a painter was supported financially by his aunt, enabling him to study at the Académie Suisse in Paris and at Charles Gleyre's atelier. where he met a number of his future Impressionist colleagues. Monet received valuable advice from his fellow Normandy painter Boudin, who specialized in beach and harbor scenes around Le Havre and often worked in the open air. In his still life and figure work of the later 1860s, Monet followed the lead of Manet. For the rendering of landscape, however, Monet admired the limpid tonalities of Corot as well as the more robust realism of Courbet, but he quickly established his own vigorous personal manner using bold, abbreviated touches--the style that came to be known as Impressionism.

In 1867, Monet's model and mistress Camille Doncieux gave birth to a son, an event that caused a rift with his father. Monet and Doncieux married in 1 870 and, since he had a family to support, landscape subjects became Monet's bread and butter. After working In a number of landscape settings the forest of Fontainebleau, Le Havre, London during the Franco-Prussian War, and Holland immediately afterward in 1871 Monet settled in Argenteuil, a small town on the Seine to the west of Paris.

Argenteuil proved the ideal site for Monet, offering him a wealth of motifs. It allowed him to combine his interest in water, boats, and bridges on the one hand and in the fashionable population inseparable from modern leisure on the other. In The Port at Argenteuil he depicts the widest stretch of the river, the popular yacht basin much patronized by Parisians. Although the calm and balanced composition recalls an earlier view of the same subject by Boudin, The Seine at Argenteuil, 1869 (Paul Mellon Collection, Upperville, Virginia), Monet presents a more animated scene that has been carried to a relatively high degree of finish.' His viewpoint in- corporates leisurely figures strolling along the promenade under the lengthening shade of trees. A number of houseboats, functioning as bathing places, are moored alongside. Beyond these are the sails of two small yachts, making the most of the lively breeze indicated by the scudding clouds and the drifting smoke of the steam- boat. Closing off the horizon are the arches of Argenteuil's road bridge, which had been recently rebuilt after its destruction during the Franco-Prussian War.

The first owner of this highly accomplished, luminous painting was the chic portraitist Ernest-Ange Duez (1843-1896). Living at a smart address in the avenue de la Grande Armée, Duez, with Leon Lhermitte and Alfred Roll. was one of a group of artists, slightly younger than Monet and the Impressionists, who enjoyed the support of the dealer Durand-Ruel. It is not known exactly when Duez bought the painting, but he was clearly buying in the 1870s. In 1879 he was one of the private collectors who lent a Monet to the fourth Impressionist exhibition-in that instance, another early boating subject, Entrance to the Port of Trouville, 1870 (Szépm–vészeti M–zeum, Budapest). The Port at Argenteuil was subsequently acquired, presumably at Duez's death in 1896, by Edmond Decap, a notable collector of Impressionist painting from Rouen. At Decap's sale in April 1901, the painting went for the sum of 16,500 francs to the wealthy banker Count Isaac de Camondo (1851-1911). By this date, such a sum for a Monet of this quality was about standard, reflecting the steady rise in Monet's prices during the 1890s.

Provenance:

Ernest Duez collection, Paris

Until 1901, in the Decap collection, Paris

1901, Modern Paintings Sale... collection of MX [Decap], Paris, Hôtel Drouot, April 15, 1901, n?14

From 1901 to 1911, in the collection of Count Isaac de Camondo, Paris (acquired for the sum of 16,500F at the Drouot Sale on April 15)

1911, accepted by the State as a bequest from Count Isaac de Camondo for the Louvre Museum (committee of 04/27/1911, council of 05/08/1911, order of 11/23/1911)

1911, attributed to the Louvre Museum, Paris

From 1911 to 1947, at the Louvre Museum, Paris (exhibited from 1914)

From 1947 to 1986, at the Louvre Museum, Jeu de Paume gallery, Paris

1986, assigned to the Musée d'Orsay, Paris 

Inventory number:

RF 2010