La Punta de la Hève en marea baja

This is one of the two paintings that first got Monet noticed. In 1865 he was 24 and unknown, and the official Salon accepted two of his Normandy seascapes, this stretch of shore near Le Havre among them. He had painted a smaller version outdoors at the site the year before, then worked this larger one up in his Paris studio for the jury. Visitors kept confusing his signature with that of the older, notorious Edouard Manet, and when Manet found himself congratulated for a beach he had not painted, he went looking for the younger man. That meeting began one of the great friendships in French painting. The tide is out, the sky enormous, and there is almost nobody on the sand.