Rochers à Belle-Île

In the autumn of 1886 Monet left the soft light of the Seine valley and went out to Belle-Île, a granite island off the south coast of Brittany where the Atlantic hits the rocks head-on. He meant to stay two weeks and stayed more than two months, working through wind and rain that pinned his easel down. He called the coast sinister, diabolical, and magnificent, and said he needed no sun for such gloomy effects. What he chased here was not a pretty view but the sheer weight of water and stone, the same jagged rocks painted again and again as the weather shifted. This canvas is one of that Belle-Île group, and the dark, clotted color is the storm light he came looking for.