Sur la plage à Trouville

The summer of 1870 was a strange time to be painting on a beach. Monet had married Camille that June, and the two of them went to Trouville, on the Normandy coast, for what amounted to a honeymoon. Within weeks France declared war on Prussia, and by autumn Monet would leave the country for London to avoid the fighting. This small canvas, barely larger than a briefcase, comes from that brief window. It shows Camille and a woman beside her seated on the sand, both shading their faces with parasols, the crowd of other bathers dashed in behind them with a few quick strokes. He worked fast and partly out of doors, and he was careless about it in a way that lasted. Grains of Trouville sand blew into the wet paint and are still stuck in the surface today.