Cliffs of the Petites Dalles

In August and September of 1875 the Empress Elisabeth of Austria stayed at a château a little way inland from this beach and came down to bathe at Les Petites-Dalles, walking to the water through a corridor of canvas that kept onlookers from seeing her. The hamlet, on the Normandy coast near Fécamp, was turning into a quiet resort, with villas going up along the shore beneath its white chalk cliffs. Monet came here for the first time in September 1880 and stayed about two weeks. He painted only two canvases on that visit, and this is one of them. He came back in 1881 and again in 1884, and over the rest of the decade the cliffs of this coast, at Fécamp, Pourville, Varengeville and Étretat, would take up a large share of his work. On this first canvas he signed his name at the lower left with the full year, 1880.