A Seascape, Shipping by Moonlight

Monet liked to paint with his subject in front of him, and he said later that night scenes did not suit him, since they could not be painted on the spot. So this moonlit harbour at Honfleur, on the Normandy coast, was made indoors, over a still life he had painted out. On the back he wrote 1864, the date the Scottish National Gallery keeps. The writer Zacharie Astruc, a friend, is reported to have watched Monet painting seascapes with a palette knife in his studio near Paris in 1866, and knife work runs all through this canvas, so some specialists date it two or three years later. The moon itself is hidden by cloud. It shows only in the bright patches on the water, and the lighthouse on the right answers it with a beam built up in softer, more gradual steps.