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Lot Essay
In September 1880, Claude Monet traveled with his brother, Léon, from Rouen to Les Petites-Dalles, a small seaside resort on the coast of Normandy. This was Monet’s first visit to the sea in seven years, and although his stay lasted only around two weeks, the trip proved invigorating. Having endured the tragic death of his wife Camille in 1879, and a subsequent period of financial hardship, he found himself somewhat renewed by the arresting vistas, thunderous waves, and vast panoramas that he encountered in Normandy. In many ways, this was a homecoming of sorts for the artist who had grown up near Le Havre and had spent time traveling along the coast during the 1860s and 1870s. Both a nostalgic return and a release from his recent emotional strain, the cathartic trip saw Monet refamiliarize himself with the region, and marked the beginning of a prolonged and profound visual engagement with its coastline.
Buoyed with newfound enthusiasm as well as the success of the 1880 paintings—the dealer Paul Durand-Ruel purchased fifteen pictures, including two of Les Petites-Dalles—Monet eagerly returned to Normandy in 1881. He installed himself in Fécamp and spent his days roaming the coast in search of motifs that caught his eye. It was during this trip that he painted Falaise des Petites-Dalles, a spirited seascape awash in soft, diaphanous tonalities.
Committed to painting en plein air, Monet would have set up his easel on the rocky beach and cast his eye towards the eastern side of the harbor of Les Petites-Dalles as he developed this composition. The towering form of the cliff dominates the present work, the sheer height of its façade suggested by an intricate weave of vertical brushstrokes. Wintery light has turned the Channel seafoam green, and impastoed swirls of white paint evoke the waves’ froth crashing against the shore. The imagery is dynamic and teeming with movement; as the renowned art historian Richard Bretell noted, “Monet’s coastal pictures of the 1880s clearly demonstrate his uncanny ability to depict the invisible—the wind” (Monet in Normandy, exh. cat., Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, 2006, p. 98). Working in solitude and facing adverse weather conditions—his outings were often impacted by the heavy rains and winds that buffeted the northern coast—Monet spent his days in the pursuit of nature’s transient effects.
Normandy had, over the course of the nineteenth century, become an increasingly popular tourist destination, with small harbors such as Les Petites-Dalles and Honfleur attracting members of the Parisian bourgeoisie during the summer months. Unlike Monet’s earlier Normandy paintings, however, the works created during the 1880s largely eschew any specific human presence, a desire underscored by his decision to visit during the off-season. As Paul Hayes Tucker observed, “The elemental qualities of these pictures bespeak Monet’s keen interest in stripping away the superfluous and non-essential, just as they reveal his firm avoidance of any evidence of modern life” (Claude Monet: Life and Art, New Haven, 1995, p. 109).
For Robert L. Herbert, the sheer visual power of the cliffs brought an almost neo-Romantic quality to Monet’s paintings during this period: “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” (Monet on the Normandy Coast: Tourism and Painting, 1867-1886, New Haven, 1994, p. 108). Drawing on the example of landscapes by Gustave Courbet, works such as Falaise des Petites-Dalles celebrate the majesty and drama of the Channel’s coastline. Monet painted the motif at Les Petites-Dalles from a number of different viewpoints and under varying weather conditions, a practice which may be seen to represent the artist’s first steps towards painting serially. In a letter dated 25 March 1882, Monet wrote to his dealer Durand-Ruel about his most recent canvases, referring to them as a related group of interconnected views: “I would prefer to show you all the series of my studies at once, desirous to see them all together in my studio” (letter to P. Durand-Ruel, quoted in D. Wildenstein, op. cit., 1979, vol. II, p. 217).
Falaises des Petites-Dalles is a testament to the bold experimentation that Monet achieved during these sojourns in the early 1880s. The urgency the artist must have felt to record these sensations is echoed in his energetic brushwork, which appears to be governed by its own internal force. Using a palette of luminous color, the imposing cliff and ever-changing shoreline became a vehicle for Monet’s own explorations of color and light.
Buoyed with newfound enthusiasm as well as the success of the 1880 paintings—the dealer Paul Durand-Ruel purchased fifteen pictures, including two of Les Petites-Dalles—Monet eagerly returned to Normandy in 1881. He installed himself in Fécamp and spent his days roaming the coast in search of motifs that caught his eye. It was during this trip that he painted Falaise des Petites-Dalles, a spirited seascape awash in soft, diaphanous tonalities.
Committed to painting en plein air, Monet would have set up his easel on the rocky beach and cast his eye towards the eastern side of the harbor of Les Petites-Dalles as he developed this composition. The towering form of the cliff dominates the present work, the sheer height of its façade suggested by an intricate weave of vertical brushstrokes. Wintery light has turned the Channel seafoam green, and impastoed swirls of white paint evoke the waves’ froth crashing against the shore. The imagery is dynamic and teeming with movement; as the renowned art historian Richard Bretell noted, “Monet’s coastal pictures of the 1880s clearly demonstrate his uncanny ability to depict the invisible—the wind” (Monet in Normandy, exh. cat., Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, 2006, p. 98). Working in solitude and facing adverse weather conditions—his outings were often impacted by the heavy rains and winds that buffeted the northern coast—Monet spent his days in the pursuit of nature’s transient effects.
Normandy had, over the course of the nineteenth century, become an increasingly popular tourist destination, with small harbors such as Les Petites-Dalles and Honfleur attracting members of the Parisian bourgeoisie during the summer months. Unlike Monet’s earlier Normandy paintings, however, the works created during the 1880s largely eschew any specific human presence, a desire underscored by his decision to visit during the off-season. As Paul Hayes Tucker observed, “The elemental qualities of these pictures bespeak Monet’s keen interest in stripping away the superfluous and non-essential, just as they reveal his firm avoidance of any evidence of modern life” (Claude Monet: Life and Art, New Haven, 1995, p. 109).
For Robert L. Herbert, the sheer visual power of the cliffs brought an almost neo-Romantic quality to Monet’s paintings during this period: “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” (Monet on the Normandy Coast: Tourism and Painting, 1867-1886, New Haven, 1994, p. 108). Drawing on the example of landscapes by Gustave Courbet, works such as Falaise des Petites-Dalles celebrate the majesty and drama of the Channel’s coastline. Monet painted the motif at Les Petites-Dalles from a number of different viewpoints and under varying weather conditions, a practice which may be seen to represent the artist’s first steps towards painting serially. In a letter dated 25 March 1882, Monet wrote to his dealer Durand-Ruel about his most recent canvases, referring to them as a related group of interconnected views: “I would prefer to show you all the series of my studies at once, desirous to see them all together in my studio” (letter to P. Durand-Ruel, quoted in D. Wildenstein, op. cit., 1979, vol. II, p. 217).
Falaises des Petites-Dalles is a testament to the bold experimentation that Monet achieved during these sojourns in the early 1880s. The urgency the artist must have felt to record these sensations is echoed in his energetic brushwork, which appears to be governed by its own internal force. Using a palette of luminous color, the imposing cliff and ever-changing shoreline became a vehicle for Monet’s own explorations of color and light.