Étretat, the Manneporte, Reflections on the Water

Étretat, the Manneporte, Reflections on the Water (Étretat, la Manneporte, reflets sur l'eau) was painted by Claude Monet around 1885 on the Normandy coast. The canvas, 65.5 by 81.5 centimeters and number 1038 in Wildenstein's catalogue, belongs to the Musée d'Orsay, which received it in 1994 as a gift from Pierre Larock and his children in memory of the dealer Katia Granoff. It is not shown in Paris: since 1999 it has been on long-term deposit at the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Caen.

What you are looking at

The Manneporte is the largest of the three natural arches in the chalk cliffs at Étretat, a huge doorway of rock opening onto the sea. Here Monet sees it from the water's level, slightly to the side, so the arch appears as a shadowy blue-violet opening in a wall of pale cliff that runs across the upper right of the picture. The crest of the rock is lit a warm apricot and orange, the face below is cream and white, and the shadows inside the arch are lilac and blue.

Most of the canvas is water. The sea in the foreground is a flickering mass of short strokes in jade, turquoise, lilac and white, in which the cliff and arch break into wavering reflections. At the lower left a flat pinkish rock breaks the surface, and along the base of the cliff small dark ledges catch the swell. A pale, hazy sky, almost the same tone as the cliff, fills the upper left, so the rock seems to float in light. Monet signed the canvas at lower right.

How it was painted

The picture is about atmosphere rather than geology. Monet keeps the contrasts low and the colors pale, painting the cliff in soft, dragged strokes and the water in rapid broken touches that follow the movement of the swell. Notice how little separates sky from rock at the upper left: the edge of the cliff dissolves into a milky haze of lilac and white, and only the warm band along the top tells you where stone ends and air begins.

The reflections are the subject named in the title. Monet paints them as vertical streaks of cream and violet broken by horizontal ripples of green, so the cliff seems to continue down into the sea and then shatter. According to the Orsay, the picture can be dated to 1885 by comparison with a canvas of identical size in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, signed and dated that year.

Monet and the Manneporte

Monet painted at Étretat in several campaigns between 1883 and 1886, often from narrow beaches and ledges that he could reach only at low tide. In November 1885 a wave caught him painting at the foot of the cliffs and swept him and his easel into the water; he escaped soaked, with his palette lost. The Manneporte appears in some of his most dramatic canvases, such as The Manneporte (Étretat) of 1883 and The Manneporte near Étretat of 1886, both in the Metropolitan Museum. In those the arch is a massive, sunlit block. This version is the quietest of them, the arch reduced almost to a ghost in the haze.

The Porte d'Aval and the Aiguille, at the other end of the bay, are the subject of The Cliffs at Étretat and Étretat, the Porte d'Aval: Fishing Boats Leaving the Harbor, and the stormy weather of these visits fills Rough Sea at Étretat. Our hub on Étretat and the Normandy coast follows the whole campaign.

Where to see it

The painting belongs to the Musée d'Orsay, but it is on deposit at the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Caen, Normandy, inside the walls of the château, so that is where to look for it; check that it is on display before visiting. Étretat itself is about an hour and a half north-east of Caen, and the cliff path above the Manneporte is open to walkers. More on Claude Monet.