Harbour of Étretat

In 1852 Étretat was still a working fishing village on the Normandy chalk coast, better known for its herring boats than for its view. Jongkind was among the first painters to bother with it, arriving more than a decade before the crowds of artists who would later make its arched cliffs famous. He painted the small harbour late in the day, in the warm colours of a sinking sun, the boats drawn up on the shingle and the pale headlands closing off the bay. Those chalk cliffs, worn by the sea into arches and a freestanding needle of rock, are the reason painters came here at all. Here they sit in the background of an ordinary evening on a busy little port.