Etude de Pourville

In February of 1882 Monet moved from Poissy, where he was renting a house with Alice Hosched, to Dieppe on the coast of Normandy. Uninspired by the urban views afforded him in Dieppe, Monet soon left for Pourville, a fishing village five kilometers to the west, where he took a room in a modest hotel on the beach. Monet stayed here for two and a half months, interrupted by a short trip to Paris for the seventh group exhibition of independant artists, and returned with his extended family for the summer. The present work displays the artist's fascination with the bleakness of the empty winter landscape. Monet found working in the cold trying and would complain that the cliffs had no caves like those around Dieppe where he could take shelter during inclement weather.

The Wildenstein Institute will include this work in their forthcoming supplement to the Monet catalogue raisonn.