The Rocks at Pourville, Low Tide

In early February 1882 Monet travelled to the Normandy coast and settled at Pourville, a small beach village just west of Dieppe. He stayed about seven weeks, painting outdoors through the tail end of winter, while back in Paris the seventh Impressionist exhibition opened in March with a large group of his canvases on the walls. Here he looks down at the shore when the sea has pulled back. The ebb has uncovered a long shelf of rock, and the tiny figures standing out on it are local people gathering shellfish, set down in a few quick dabs. Closer in, the dark, jagged rocks sit against the white foam of the broken waves churning between them. The canvas came to Rochester in 1939 as a gift of Emily Sibley Watson, who had founded the Memorial Art Gallery in memory of her son.