View over the Sea

From atop a sheer cliff, we look down at the sea stretching out below.
In the foreground lies a slope lush with wild grasses and flowers, beyond which the rippling sea extends endlessly.

France in the early 1880s.
With the dramatic expansion of the railway network, the Normandy coast opened wide to the middle and bourgeois classes.
It was the height of an explosive boom in modern seaside leisure and tourism.
This painting might appear to be simply a beautiful snapshot of such a fashionable coastal scene.
An ordinary landscape of a tranquil resort—
that is often how it is perceived.

Yet, in truth, this work completely eliminates an element that was once essential to traditional Western landscape painting:
the horizon.

In 1882, Monet made an extended stay in Pourville, a quiet port village near Dieppe.
From February to April, and again from June to October.
He was captivated by this new coastal life.
Yet his focus was distinctly different from the pure pleasures of leisure he had once painted in Argenteuil.
What he poured his soul into
was the dialogue between the overwhelming meteorological shifts over the English Channel and the modern recreational sailing boats floating like small white accents upon it.
Examining this new form of dialogue between humanity and nature as pure optical effects of light.
Throughout his stay in Pourville, Monet rushed across the clifftops carrying several canvases at once.
The ebb and flow of the tide.
The drifting clouds.
He chased the changing weather minute by minute.
Whenever the light shifted, he immediately swapped out the canvas on his easel for another in progress.
Embodying the ultimate spirit of plein-air painting, he worked relentlessly.
It was a solitary, grueling battle to capture something as intangible as shifting weather on canvas.