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Lot Essay
From 1880 until 1886, Monet soujourned every year on the Normandy coast, painting numerous views of its towering cliffs and sprawling beaches. The scholar Paul Hayes Tucker has noted:
Without doubt his favorite site during the 1880s was the Normandy coast; it obviously was in his blood from his childhood in Le Havre and Saint-Adresse and was easily accessible from Vétheuil and later from Giverny where he moved in 1883. Of all the places he visited on the coast, several became his most frequented--Pourville, Varengeville, Etretat, and Dieppe. Their appeal lay primarily in their dramatic cliffs and stretches of beach, their simplicity, starkness, and past history (Claude Monet: Life and Art, New Haven, 1995, p. 107).
The present painting was executed at Etretat, a picturesque location about halfway between Le Havre and Dieppe, with one of the most famous cliff formations in France. The cliffs curved out from the town in a crescent shape before rising to tremendous heights, their striated limestone surfaces capped by lush green grass. The most spectacular feature of the cliffs was a series of three promontories that jutted out into the Channel, each pierced with a monumental archway sculpted over the centuries by wind and water.
Although Monet painted all three archways at Etretat, the Porte d'Aval was by far his favorite, appearing in more than thirty canvases. Some of Monet's scenes of the Porte d'Aval from this angle include the beach in the foreground, while others show only the cliffs, ocean, and sky. Likewise, the Needle is visible in certain canvases and hidden in others, depending on the particular vantage point that the artist selected. Monet also painted the Porte d'Aval and the Needle from the opposite side, positioning his easel near the Manneporte and looking east.
Monet's emphasis in his paintings from Etretat on the raw power of nature marks a dramatic shift in his work from the previous decade. In the 1870s, his paintings of coastal locales such as Sainte-Adresse and Trouville had centered upon their society of vacationers and leisure-seekers. Although Etretat had become a major resort for fashionable Parisians by the 1880s, the landscapes that he made there exclude all evidence of tourism, including the beachfront hotels and bathing cabins that lined the shore. The scholar Robert Herbert has written:
In these pictures we are brought extremely close to the cliffs in unusual compositions intended to make us feel small and powerless in front of awesome nature. [The paintings] could suit the words of Jacob Venedy, when he climbed the Aval in 1837: 'yawning gulphs open at our feet, out of which the agitated sea sends up tones like the voice of a bard singing the destruction of his race.' Monet's rocks have an overpowering presence by virtue of their writhing mass, and by a stronger contrast of color: his dark blues and purples stand out against the yellowish sunset. If we stare at his picture for a few moments, its rhythms force our eye upward, and then we sense the fragility of these delicately curved masses that seem almost to tremble against the evening sky, threatening us with their potential of collapse (R.L. Herbert, Monet on the Normandy Coast: Tourism and Painting, 1867-1886, New Haven, 1994, pp. 108-110, 127).
Without doubt his favorite site during the 1880s was the Normandy coast; it obviously was in his blood from his childhood in Le Havre and Saint-Adresse and was easily accessible from Vétheuil and later from Giverny where he moved in 1883. Of all the places he visited on the coast, several became his most frequented--Pourville, Varengeville, Etretat, and Dieppe. Their appeal lay primarily in their dramatic cliffs and stretches of beach, their simplicity, starkness, and past history (Claude Monet: Life and Art, New Haven, 1995, p. 107).
The present painting was executed at Etretat, a picturesque location about halfway between Le Havre and Dieppe, with one of the most famous cliff formations in France. The cliffs curved out from the town in a crescent shape before rising to tremendous heights, their striated limestone surfaces capped by lush green grass. The most spectacular feature of the cliffs was a series of three promontories that jutted out into the Channel, each pierced with a monumental archway sculpted over the centuries by wind and water.
Although Monet painted all three archways at Etretat, the Porte d'Aval was by far his favorite, appearing in more than thirty canvases. Some of Monet's scenes of the Porte d'Aval from this angle include the beach in the foreground, while others show only the cliffs, ocean, and sky. Likewise, the Needle is visible in certain canvases and hidden in others, depending on the particular vantage point that the artist selected. Monet also painted the Porte d'Aval and the Needle from the opposite side, positioning his easel near the Manneporte and looking east.
Monet's emphasis in his paintings from Etretat on the raw power of nature marks a dramatic shift in his work from the previous decade. In the 1870s, his paintings of coastal locales such as Sainte-Adresse and Trouville had centered upon their society of vacationers and leisure-seekers. Although Etretat had become a major resort for fashionable Parisians by the 1880s, the landscapes that he made there exclude all evidence of tourism, including the beachfront hotels and bathing cabins that lined the shore. The scholar Robert Herbert has written:
In these pictures we are brought extremely close to the cliffs in unusual compositions intended to make us feel small and powerless in front of awesome nature. [The paintings] could suit the words of Jacob Venedy, when he climbed the Aval in 1837: 'yawning gulphs open at our feet, out of which the agitated sea sends up tones like the voice of a bard singing the destruction of his race.' Monet's rocks have an overpowering presence by virtue of their writhing mass, and by a stronger contrast of color: his dark blues and purples stand out against the yellowish sunset. If we stare at his picture for a few moments, its rhythms force our eye upward, and then we sense the fragility of these delicately curved masses that seem almost to tremble against the evening sky, threatening us with their potential of collapse (R.L. Herbert, Monet on the Normandy Coast: Tourism and Painting, 1867-1886, New Haven, 1994, pp. 108-110, 127).