The Valley of the Nervia

The Valley of the Nervia is an oil-on-canvas landscape by Claude Monet, painted in 1884 on the Italian Riviera, showing the snow-covered Maritime Alps above the village of Camporosso; it belongs to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (30.95.251).

Monet first saw the Ligurian coast on a trip with Renoir in December 1883 and soon went back alone, telling his dealer Paul Durand-Ruel that working with a companion would hinder him. He based himself at Bordighera and spent about three months there in early 1884, writing to a friend that everything was superb, that he wanted to paint it all, and that this landscape was a new experience for him. On 17 February he joined two English acquaintances on an excursion up the valley of the Nervia, a river that meets the Mediterranean not far from Bordighera, and returned to paint in the valley; the same outing led to his views of the town of Dolceacqua.

The canvas, 66 by 81.3 cm, is signed and dated Claude Monet 84 at lower left. It is built in three horizontal bands: the white, sunlit peaks of the Maritime Alps along the French border at the top, a band of green foothills in the middle, and a pale beige foreground along the river, with Camporosso nestled at the foot of the hills. The Met notes the light, bright tones Monet used for the snowy mountains. A companion work at the Met, Palm Trees at Bordighera, reflects the same excitement at the new motifs of the region, which Monet said made him dare to use all the tones of pink and blue.

Durand-Ruel bought the painting from Monet on 6 May 1885. It was offered at a sale in New York in 1887 but bought in, and in 1895 was sold to the collector Theodore M. Davis of Newport, Rhode Island. Davis bequeathed it to the Metropolitan Museum in 1915.