Portrait of Père Paul

Monet arrived at the little Normandy resort of Pourville in February 1882 and spent the following months painting its cliffs and sea. He rarely made portraits at all, but he made an exception for the man who was feeding and housing him. Paul-Antoine Graff, an Alsatian who ran the small hotel where Monet stayed, was known to everyone as Père Paul and prized locally for his galettes, the crisp flat cakes of the coast. Monet painted him in his tall white hat and cook's jacket, head turned, the figure set into a soft oval and dissolving into a pale grey ground. It was a thank-you to a good cook and landlord, made between long days out on the cliffs, and it is one of the very few portraits in all of Monet's work.