Tempête, côtes de Belle-Île

In the autumn of 1886 Monet left the soft light of Normandy behind and went to Belle-Ile, a granite island off the Brittany coast where the Atlantic hits the rocks head-on. He arrived in September and stayed until late November, and the weather he found there unsettled him at first, since the sea changed by the hour and the spots he wanted to paint were hard to reach. You can see how it pushed his hand. The brushwork here is broader and blunter than his river scenes, the water shot through with blues, greens and violets and fringed in white where it breaks. This is one of several canvases he made of the same stretch of shore, and the only one he turned to landscape format so he could take in the whole fight between rock and water.