Hôtel des Roches Noires

Monet painted this on the Normandy coast in the summer of 1870, weeks after marrying Camille Doncieux at the end of June. It was their wedding trip, helped along by his friends the painters Manet and Bazille, and they went to Trouville, the fashionable seaside resort of the moment. The grand building hung with flags is the Hotel des Roches Noires, where the wealthy stayed. The Monets could not afford it and lodged at a cheaper hotel further back from the beach. He caught the whole thing in quick, loose strokes, the flags snapping and the sky full of moving cloud. Within weeks the Franco-Prussian War broke out, and rather than be conscripted Monet took his new family across the Channel to London.