At Cap d'Antibes, Mistral wind

The mistral is the cold, dry wind of the French south. It blows down the Rhône valley to the sea, often for days at a time under a clear sky, and it gives this picture its name. Monet spent the first months of 1888 at Antibes, and he painted this same group of trees on the cape three times. In this one the wind has hold of them, the treetops tossed about against the sea and the mountains beyond. The Museum of Fine Arts sees these pictures as part of a change in Monet around then, as he began to settle on one plain motif, set apart, and to watch what the hour and the weather did to it. He kept the canvas for two years and sold it to his dealer, Durand-Ruel, in 1890. By 1892 it was on offer in Boston at the J. Eastman Chase gallery, and by 1903 it belonged to the Boston surgeon Arthur Tracy Cabot. It came to the museum with his bequest in 1942.