Fisherman's Cottage on the Cliffs at Varengeville

There is no way in. Monet set this small stone cabin on the slope of the cliff at Varengeville, just west of Dieppe, and left out any path to it, so the eye can reach the roof while the feet cannot. The Museum of Fine Arts points out that the door and the two little windows give the building something like a face. In Monet's day fishermen used huts like this one to store their gear, which is where the painting's title comes from. He gave the roof a hot orange, which may well have been its real colour, and set it against the blue of the Channel, where a few pleasure yachts catch the light far out. The canvas is signed and dated 1882 at the lower left. In May 1890 it came up at auction from the collection of the Paris playwright Georges de Porto-Riche, and that July Durand-Ruel sold it to Anna Perkins Rogers in Boston, who left it to the museum in 1921.