Interpretive Resource

In many of the paintings he produced in the 1880s and early 1890s, Theodore Robinson surveyed the poetic topography of France, especially Giverny and its environs. One of the first American artists to paint in Giverny, a town situated about two hours northwest of Paris, Robinson integrated the methods of the region’s most famous resident, Claude Monet, into his work. Robinson helped to disseminate Impressionist painting techniques in the United States through his teaching and the exhibition of his paintings. Although it was not painted in Giverny, The Valley of Arconville resembles many of Robinson’s Giverny compositions. It demonstrates the artist’s sensitivity to color, mood, and the more spontaneous gestures and high-keyed palette of French Impressionism.

Born in Irasburg, Vermont, Robinson was raised in Evansville, Wisconsin, and received his first artistic training at the Chicago Academy of Design. He studied at New York’s National Academy of Design in 1874 and 1875, and eventually traveled to Paris in 1876, where he trained in the atelier of Émile Auguste Carolus-Duran and at the École des Beaux-Arts with Jean-Léon Gérôme. He returned to the United States in 1879 and lived in New York City until 1884; between 1884 and 1892, he divided his time between France and the United States. Of all the American artists associated with Giverny, Robinson spent the most time in the town, living there for long stretches between 1887 and 1892. One of the few Americans who gained entrance into Monet’s intimate circle, he was not only the French artist’s student, but also a family friend. His art benefited greatly from this close relationship.

The exact date Robinson met Monet is unknown, and accounts vary, but registry records from the Hôtel Baudy show that the American paid his first substantial visit to Giverny between September 18, 1887, and January 4, 1888. During the spring and summer of 1887, Robinson worked in Barbizon, but he made a trip to Dieppe, where he sketched On the Cliff. This composition echoes the Art Institute’s painting and probably depicts the same woman, Marie, who, like many models, has left little trace of her life. His presence in Arconville, a small town southeast of Paris in the Champagne region of France, is documented only by the title of the Art Institute’s painting; Robinson may have also visited Giverny that summer, before settling there in September.

The panoramic, hillside vista of The Valley of Arconville recalls the format Robinson would use in many of his views of Giverny, all of which are devoid of figures. On the Cliff shows the artist experimenting with this format as early as June 1887. Although the palette of On the Cliff is more saturated than the Art Institute’s pastel-hued canvas, the woman’s pose is strikingly similar in both pictures, in one she is bent over sewing and in the other her head is bowed over a book, and in both pictures she sits on the sloping incline of a steep hill.

Robinson used the panoramic view to great effect in The Valley of Arconville. Seen from above, the landscape spreads out before us; the artist’s layered, broken brushwork leads the eye down the slope, across the valley, and up into the background hills. Robinson captured both momentary effects, grasses and wildflowers blowing in the breeze, clouds moving across the sky, and solid structure, the geometry of the houses in the valley and the woman’s serene figure.

When The Valley of Arconville was shown in the 1889 Society of American Artists exhibition, a critic for Art Amateur commented: "Mr. Theodore Robinson is one of those who have really gained a good deal by study of impressionistic methods. Of his seven contributions, there is none which does not show a solid advance beyond his work of previous years, and none that does not belong distinctly to the new school. The narrowing of his aim in this case, as in so many others, has been the saving of the artist." Robinson’s success with Impressionist methods and depictions of the French or American countryside continued until his premature death in 1896.