Los acantilados de Étretat

Monet came back to Étretat on the Normandy coast again and again in the 1880s, drawn to the great stone arches the sea had cut into the chalk. He worked there through autumn and winter, when the weather did what he wanted. Once, in 1885, a wave caught him at his easel and dragged him and his canvases across the shingle before he scrambled clear. This view dates from around 1886. The cliff and its natural archway are set down in short, loaded strokes, the water below broken into flecks of green and violet. Courbet had painted these same cliffs a generation earlier. Monet kept returning until he had the light of one particular hour on that rock, then took the canvas home to Giverny to finish.