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| Claude Monet The Drawbridge, Amsterdam 1874 oil on canvas Shelburne Museum, Vermont formerly owned by Louisine Havemeyer |
At age twenty in 1875 the unmarried Louisine Elder, encouraged by her friend Mary Cassatt, had used her pocket money to buy her first Impressionist picture, a Degas pastel of ballet dancers. That same year she managed to find another 300 francs (about $60) for her first Monet, The Drawbridge, Amsterdam, now in the Vermont museum founded well after her death by her younger daughter, Electra. This was the first Monet ever brought to the United States.
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| Claude Monet High Tide at Pourville 1882 oil on canvas Brooklyn Museum formerly owned by Louisine Havemeyer |
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| Claude Monet Haystacks in the Snow or Haystacks (Effect of Snow and Sun) 1891 oil on canvas Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York formerly owned by Louisine Havemeyer |
" . . . Harry had started the year 1894 with an acquisition that was truly bold in comparison to his former relatively conservative policy. On January 16 he purchased from the Durand-Ruel gallery three paintings by Claude Monet: High Tide at Pourville, Morning on the Seine at Giverny, and Haystacks in the Snow, the last formerly in the Potter Palmer collection. These were the first pictures by the artist Harry and Louisine acquired jointly, since the only Monet they had owned until then was bought by Louisine before her marriage."
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| Claude Monet Poplars or The Four Trees 1891 oil on canvas Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York formerly owned by Louisine Havemeyer |
"In New York, January 1895 was the month of Monet, with a retrospective of forty of his landscapes at the Durand-Ruel gallery. The New York Times marveled at the vast scope of the artist's influence: 'Scoffed, jeered, and laughed at in his earlier days, he has lived to witness a genuine triumph, to see his methods approved, his work imitated, and his pictures sold at substantial figures. There is scarce an exhibition in the last few years but shows in a dozen or more pictures his directing agency; from the greatest of his contemporaries to the humblest student in the schools, few there are who have hesitated to take from him some hint or suggestion.' But the Times critic still termed Monet's choice of subject often "unfortunate"; this opinion was shared by the reviewer of The Art Amateur, who found some of his landscapes quite monotonous. . . . On January 12, the opening day of the Monet exhibition, the Havemeyers purchased Poplars and Landscape – Haystacks in the Snow [a different Haystacks in the Snow from the one they bought in 1894]."
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| Claude Monet Ice Floes, Bennecourt 1893 oil on canvas private collection formerly owned by Louisine Havemeyer |
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| Claude Monet La Grenouillère 1869 oil on canvas Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York formerly owned by Louisine Havemeyer |
"For the past four years, Louisine and Harry had intermittently been obtaining landscapes by Monet, the only pure plein-airist to whom they were really committed. Durand-Ruel was usually their source for these works, but occasionally they acquired them at auction or from other dealers. In Paris on September 23, 1897 they purchased Monet's Ice Floes, Bennecourt from I. Montaignac, who had formerly been the Paris representative of the American Art Association. Louisine and Harry had bought another of Monet's ice floe paintings earlier that year from Durand-Ruel, and in September, at the same time they acquired from him Goya's Sureda portraits, also a version of Monet's La Grenouillère. Monet's depiction of this pleasure-spot for boating and bathing at Bougival on the Seine River was among the most lighthearted and carefree pictures to enter the Havemeyers' collection . . . Apart from a few paintings by Monet and Manet, the Havemeyers did not care in general for the cheerful, unproblematical world of vacationists, of simple rural settings, or the pleasant everyday life on Parisian boulevards as represented by Renoir, Sisley, and Pissarro."
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| Claude Monet Snow at Argenteuil 1874 oil on canvas private collection formerly owned by Louisine Havemeyer |
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| Claude Monet The Green Wave 1866-67 oil on canvas Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York formerly owned by Louisine Havemeyer |
"In March 1898 they bought Monet's Snow at Argenteuil from Boussod, Valadon, from whom they had also purchased Dancer Tying Her Slipper, a pastel by Degas. In most instances, however, their source for pictures remained the Durand-Ruel galleries in New York and Paris. . . . The firm's American clients seem constantly to have brought their pictures back, either as part of a trade or simply because they no longer cared for them. The Havemeyers often took advantage of these returns, the more so as earlier works by the moderns were becoming scarce. Monet's The Green Wave, for example was a painting that Mary Cassatt had purchased in 1883 on behalf of her brother Alexander; in 1898 he returned it to the Durand-Ruels, who thereupon sold it to the Havemeyers."
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| Claude Monet Bouquet of Sunflowers 1881 oil on canvas Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York formerly owned by Louisine Havemeyer |
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| Claude Monet Chrysanthemums 1882 oil on canvas Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York formerly owned by Louisine Havemeyer |
"And again, Louisine and Harry acquired three pictures on March 10, 1899 that had belonged to Catholina Lambert, a silk manufacturer who lived in a lavish English-style castle on a hill overlooking Paterson, New Jersey, where he housed a vast collection that was more dazzling by its magnitude than its quality. Two of these Lambert paintings were Monet flower pieces that Alden Wyman Kingman had bought at the first Impressionist exhibition in New York in 1886. Kingman returned them to Durand-Ruel's New York branch in 1892; they were subsequently acquired by Lambert, who kept them until 1899. Thus within thirteen years, Monet's Sunflowers and Chrysanthemums had hung in three different American collections."
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| Claude Monet The River Zaan at Zaandam 1871 oil on canvas Mehmad Collection formerly owned by Louisine Havemeyer |
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| Claude Monet Bridge over a Pond of Water Lilies 1899 oil on canvas Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York formerly owned by Louisine Havemeyer |
"They also picked a splendid early work by Monet, The River Zaan at Zaandam; this was their third picture by the artist acquired during the first half of 1901; before leaving for Europe, they had obtained from Durand-Ruel's New York branch two more recent Monets, both of the same scene, Bridge over a Pool of Water Lilies. After living with the two very similar canvases for a year, they kept the one they preferred and returned the other."
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| Claude Monet Barges at Asnières 1873 oil on canvas private collection formerly owned by Louisine Havemeyer |
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| Claude Monet The Thames at Charing Cross Bridge 1899 oil on canvas Shelburne Museum, Vermont formerly owned by Louisine Havemeyer |
"By the end of 1901 they had acquired three more of his paintings, all dating from the 1870s; among them a view of the Seine at Asnières with barges in the foreground. Mary Cassatt would soon write to Harry: 'Louie wants me to keep a look out for fine Monets. I have just heard of someone who has several good early pictures . . .' Louisine and her husband were fully aware that Monet's prices, as well as his reputation, were rapidly escalating and that good buys of his work would become increasingly rare. . . . Before their European trip [in 1903] the Havemeyers had purchase several pictures from the New York branch of Durand-Ruel, among them another Monet, The Thames at Charing Cross Bridge . . . "
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| Claude Monet London, Houses of Parliament 1903 oil on canvas Princeton University Art Museum formerly owned by Louisine Havemeyer |
"Her sudden widowhood seems to have brought Louisine's innate frugality to the surface, although she had been left more than well provided for. She felt compelled to sell certain pictures in order to be able to buy a painting of Saint Martin by El Greco. On November 30, 1908 Joseph Durand-Ruel, who was now in the New York gallery, acknowledged receipt of nine works Louisine had decided to dispose of. In addition to earlier Dutch, French, Italian and Spanish pictures, there were two canvases by Monet and one by Decamps, the latter with an asking price of $11,000, the highest in the group. Had she sold all nine at her prices, Louisine would have obtained a little over $40,000. As it happened, only two pictures from this group were actually sold. The gallery would buy back for $5,000 Monet's London, Houses of Parliament, purchased by Harry the year before he died . . ."
– quoted texts from The Havemeyers: Impressionism Comes to America by Frances Weitzenhoffer (New York: Abrams, 1986)