À propos de l’œuvre
Les falaises de Varengeville, par Claude Monet
Claude Monet · 1897 · MuMa Le Havre A 488 · W1450
The Cliffs of Varengeville, MuMa W1450hand painted reproduction
A small customs house, almost absorbed by vegetation, dominates a turquoise opening onto the sea. The cliff occupies most of the canvas: Monet builds it with roses, tender greens, lilac grays and colored whites rather than with a uniform rock mass. Two tiny offshore sails give the scale of this promontory seen from above.
Look at the work
The cliff becomes a mass of powdery light in front of a turquoise sea where two sails hold the horizon
The gaze starts from the red signature, at the bottom left, then goes up into a clearly defined pathless terrain. The short touches overlap like tight vegetation. At the top, the house appears with a few pale pink and red-brown planes; its roof and fireplace are enough to identify it without isolating it from the landscape.
The sea forms a large blue-green triangle between the left slope and the right relief. Its surface, much calmer than the cliff, nevertheless contains several blues and a grayer band near the horizon. The small white and yellow sails interrupt this cold space. Their relative precision reinforces the immensity of the site.
Monet does not separate rock, grass and light: he mixes them in the same vibrant material, then opens the composition by sea.
Composition, touch and light
What Monet builds behind the impression of snapshot
Three precise elements allow us to understand this composition and the essential difficulties of faithful reproduction.
A cliff that occupies three quarters of the field
The foreground is deliberately monumental and almost without outline. Preserving its variations of pink, green and mauve avoids transforming this luminous mass into a simple gray slope.
The house as a ladder marker
The building is small, but its roof, its fireplace and its two facades organize the entire upper part. It must remain readable without receiving a harder drawing than the rest of the canvas.
A marine blue crossed with nuances
Turquoise, blue-gray and sea green overlap in the bay. The duller passage of the horizon and the point sails prevent the sea from becoming a decorative flat.
Reference image
Read this specific version
The single reference image comes from a real photograph of the canvas at MuMa. It was straightened and cropped to 2790 × 1915 px, then converted into a real WebP without artificial enlargement.
A plunging point of view
The coastline disappears behind the vegetation and the viewer seems placed on the edge of the promontory. This height gives the house and the boats their small scale.
Light colors right down to the rock
The cliff combines soft green, powder pink, gray purple and cream. Faithful reproduction should keep these temperatures distinct without whitening them evenly.
A touch visible in diffused light
The reference file comes from an actual photograph of the canvas at the museum. It reveals the material of the brush and the surface covers, here cropped without artificial enlargement.
Documented benchmarks
Three pieces of information specific to this work
These landmarks concern the painting given by Monet to the city of Le Havre, inventory A 488 and Wildenstein 1450.
MuMa Le Havre A 488, W1450
This oil on canvas from 1897 measures 64 × 91.5 cm. It is signed and dated "Claude Monet 97" lower left.
Monet offers the painting to the Le Havre museum
In 1910, Monet gave this work to the town where he grew up and where his vocation as a painter was affirmed. It entered the municipal collections at the beginning of 1911.
The 1897 campaign exhibited at Georges Petit
Monet returned to the Normandy coast in 1897 and worked around Varengeville and Pourville. Several views of this countryside were brought together during his exhibition at the Georges Petit gallery in 1898.
Your reproduction
What the painter must preserve
Fidelity here depends on precise relationships between light, touch, depth and color temperature.
- The exact version of MuMa Le Havre, inventory A 488 and Wildenstein 1450
- The original horizontal ratio of 64 × 91.5 cm
- The house kept small and integrated into the vegetation
- The pinks, greens and mauves of the cliff preserved without uniform gray
Work sheet
| Title | The Cliffs of Varengeville, MuMa W1450 |
|---|---|
| Artist | Claude Monet (1840 -1926) |
| Date | 1897 |
| Original technique | Oil on canvas |
| Dimensions | 64 × 91.5 cm |
| Orientation | Horizontal |
| Conservation | MuMa - André Malraux Museum of Modern Art, Le Havre, France |
| Inventory | A 488 · Wildenstein 1450 |
| Your reproduction | Handmade oil painting on canvas |
Presentation in your interior
A palette designed with the room
Turquoise, sage green, mineral pink, lilac and cream make up a light and maritime palette. This horizontal reproduction accompanies a living room, bedroom or entrance with blond wood, natural linen and soft side lighting.
