Low Tide at Pourville, near Dieppe, 1882

In the spring of 1882 Monet rented rooms on the Normandy coast at Pourville, a small fishing village near Dieppe, and set up almost at the water's edge. He wrote at the time that he could not be any closer to the sea, that the waves beat at the foot of his house. The low huts tucked under the cliff on the right are the kind of place he was staying in. The title fixes a single moment in the day, the tide pulled back to bare the pebbled beach. Under that beach there is a change of mind. Beneath the sand Monet had first laid in water, for a higher tide, then painted the shore back over it when he settled on this later hour.