Low Tide at Les Petites-Dalles

Earlier that year Monet had been on the Italian Riviera at Bordighera, painting in a light so intense he complained he needed a palette of diamonds and jewels to catch the colour. Then in August 1884 he came back north, to the Normandy coast he'd grown up on near Le Havre. His younger brother Léon had a summer house at Les Petites-Dalles, a small bathing resort near Fécamp under the white chalk cliffs they call the Alabaster Coast. It was a short trip, just long enough to paint a few views. This is the beach at low tide, the wet sand opened up and the cliff rising at the side. Those little flecks of colour scattered along the waterline aren't surf, they're bathers, put in with a few dabs. In the corner he signed and dated it plainly, 84.