Around 1880 -1897 · Étretat, Pourville, Dieppe and light of the Normandy coast

Monet constantly returns to the Normandy cliffs: arch, chalk, sea and sky change with the hour, the tide and the wind until the same relief becomes a series of luminous experiences.

Claude Monet has known the Normandy coast since his youth in Le Havre, but the countryside of the 1880s gave the cliffs a central place in his work. In Pourville, Dieppe, Varengeville, Fécamp and Étretat, he set up his easel facing the sea or at the top of the promontories. The Porte d'Aval, the Manneporte and the chalk walls are never treated like immobile monuments. Bad weather, morning, setting sun or rough seas transform color, depth and balance of composition. Monet often works several paintings in parallel in order to follow the rapid variations of the atmosphere, then takes them up in the workshop. These campaigns announce the logic of future series: the subject geological remains recognizable, but above all the painting records a time, a light and a perception always repeated. The "Cliffs of Claude Monet" selection notably compares Cliffs of Pourville, rough seas and Pourville Cliff, in the morning. Its reading favors movement.

The cliff gives Monet a stable shape against which to measure the instability of the world: tide, wind, mist and sun constantly reinvent chalk.