Val-Saint-Nicolas, près Dieppe (matin)

Monet spent the late winters of 1896 and 1897 in lodgings at Pourville on the Normandy coast, working the cliff tops above Dieppe. He hated the weather and wrote home about it constantly, gloomy skies, dull haze, an icy wind, and in January he said the only thing keeping him warm was the fever of work. Val-Saint-Nicolas is a hanging valley on that stretch of coast, a notch where the land breaks off to the sea. He painted it at fixed hours, which is what the word Morning in the title is doing. He carried several canvases up the cliff at once and swapped them as the light moved, so one picture could take weeks of matching mornings. He had first painted these cliffs in 1882, 15 years before.