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Lot Essay
Monet first visited Pourville in February 1882 when he travelled there from Dieppe, just four kilometres eastwards along the Channel coast. 'Without doubt [Monet's] favourite site during the 1880s was the Normandy coast; it obviously was in his blood from his childhood in Le Havre and Saint-Addresse 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, Étretat, and Dieppe...Their appeal lay primarily in their dramatic cliffs and stretches of beach, their simplicity, starkness and past history' (P. Hayes Tucker, Claude Monet, Life and Art, New Haven 1995, p. 107).
The present work dates from Monet's second visit to Pourville in the summer of 1882, a visit he eagerly anticipated: 'The country is wonderful at the moment and I can't wait to get back' (quoted in D. Wildenstein, op. cit., vol. I, p. 180). In Pourville Monet rented the Villa Juliette, where he stayed with Alice Hoschedé and her children. Over the following weeks he travelled around the town, taking care to avoid that summer's very mixed weather. He sought out various motifs, from the Falaise d'Amont and the Varengeville church to the beach at Pourville where, in the present work, we see Monet looking west along the cliffs.
The present work dates from Monet's second visit to Pourville in the summer of 1882, a visit he eagerly anticipated: 'The country is wonderful at the moment and I can't wait to get back' (quoted in D. Wildenstein, op. cit., vol. I, p. 180). In Pourville Monet rented the Villa Juliette, where he stayed with Alice Hoschedé and her children. Over the following weeks he travelled around the town, taking care to avoid that summer's very mixed weather. He sought out various motifs, from the Falaise d'Amont and the Varengeville church to the beach at Pourville where, in the present work, we see Monet looking west along the cliffs.