La playa de Sainte-Adresse

Monet painted this beach in the summer of 1867, back in the Normandy town of Sainte-Adresse where he had grown up, staying with his aunt at his father's urging. He was 26, short of money, and had just left his pregnant girlfriend Camille behind in Paris because his family disapproved of her. None of that shows. What he gives us is a grey, breezy day on the Channel coast, flat sea, boats pulled up on the shingle, the wide sky doing most of the work. Study of the paint has shown he began this as a scene of pleasure yachts and holidaymakers, then painted them out and turned it into working fishermen and their sailing boats.