1864 -1897 · Honfleur, Trouville, Étretat and cliffs of light

From Honfleur to Étretat, Monet made the Normandy coast an open-air workshop: tide, cliff, wind and light constantly transform the same sites.

Claude Monet grew up in Le Havre, facing the Seine estuary, and received a decisive lesson from Eugène Boudin: working outside to capture the changing effects of the sky. From the 1860s, Honfleur, Sainte-Adresse and the mouth him provide ports, beaches and sailboats. In Trouville in 1870, he painted the boards, hotels and elegant figures on the edge of a windswept sea; the sand sometimes mixed with the material attests to the speed of the work on site. In in the 1880s, Monet returned to the coast with a new ambition. Étretat offers him the arches of Aval, Amont and Manneporte, the Aiguille and the boats pulled on the shore. He chooses several viewpoints, waits an hour precise then moves from one canvas to another when the light changes. The rock is never a fixed setting: it becomes mauve, orange, blue or gray depending on the weather, while the sea fragments its reflections. Fishing boats, Étretat associates daily activity and monumentality of the site; The Needle seen through the Porte d'Aval frames the distance in a mass of chalk; the Manneporte almost reverses the relationship between rock and water. Monet continues this research in Pourville, Varengeville and Dieppe. The Normandy coast thus runs through all of his work, from realistic beginnings to series which make the motif an instrument for measuring time. The "Côte normande by Claude Monet" selection notably compares Mer agitée in Étretat and L'Aiguille seen through the Porte d'Aval. His reading favors figures.

Monet's cliff is never still: every tide and cloud repaints it before the brush has even left the canvas.