Steep Cliffs near Dieppe

Monet came back to the cliffs near Dieppe in early 1897, a stretch of the Normandy coast he had first painted years before. By now he worked in series, returning to the same spot again and again to catch it under shifting light. What interested him here was not the sheer bulk of the rock but the haze of air and sun around it, the way the cliff face softens and almost dissolves at certain hours. He would set up several canvases at once and move between them as the light changed. The sea, the chalk and the sky are all built from the same short, broken touches of colour.