Valle Buona, Near Bordighera

Monet first saw this coast in December 1883, on a short trip with Renoir. He went back alone a few weeks later, and told his dealer Durand-Ruel that he had always worked better on his own and from his own impressions, and that going down with a friend again would be bad for both of them. This canvas comes out of that solitary winter. It turns away from the seafront and the villa gardens the visitors came for and looks inland at Vallebona, a valley of olive terraces just behind Bordighera. He set it upright rather than wide, so the ground climbs the full height of the picture. It reached Dallas in 1981, a gift from the Meadows Foundation.