Varengeville, Low Tide

In 1882 Monet lived on the Normandy coast for months at a time, first alone in the late winter and then again through the summer, and the cliffs just west of Dieppe became his daily subject. These belong to Varengeville, the village next to Pourville, where he was staying. He painted them at low tide, when the sea had drawn back and left wet sand, shallow pools and dark rocks covered in green weed. Nearly all the energy goes into the cliff face on the right, built from long vertical strokes of rust, violet and green. Far off along the beach, a few figures are set down in single dabs. He painted almost the same stretch of shore on another canvas that year, a slightly wider picture now in the Carmen Thyssen collection in Madrid. This one, signed and dated '82 in the lower left corner, came to the Kunstmuseum Winterthur in 2000 as a gift from three members of the Wolfer family.