The Cliffs at Étretat

What you are looking at

Two great forms of chalk rise from a calm sea. On the left stands the Aiguille, the "needle," a free-standing pinnacle of rock, its top lit gold and pink, its base in cool green-grey shadow. On the right, the cliff of the Porte d'Aval curves down into the water in a huge arch, a buttress of stone with daylight showing through it. Closer to us, at far right, a heavy fallen boulder streaked with ochre and lilac sits on the beach, and a strip of warm, pinkish sand runs along the bottom edge.

Between the rocks the sea is pale green-blue, shot with light, and on the horizon a scatter of small boats with red sails crosses the water, with one dark rowing boat closer in. The sky is soft blue with drifting pink clouds. Monet signed and dated the canvas "Claude Monet 85" at lower right.

Claude Monet painted the view in 1885 at Étretat on the Normandy coast. The canvas measures 65 by 81.1 centimeters, is number 1034 in Wildenstein's catalogue, and belongs to the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts.

Where and when

Étretat, north of Le Havre, sits in a bay between two chalk headlands. The western one, the Falaise d'Aval, ends in the arch of the Porte d'Aval with the Aiguille, some fifty meters high, standing in the sea beside it. Monet had painted here in 1868–69 and in February 1883. In October 1885 he came back and stayed until mid-December, lodging in a house lent by the baritone and collector Jean-Baptiste Faure. See Étretat and the Normandy Coast.

It was his longest campaign on this coast, and he painted the arches and the needle from every angle he could reach, sometimes at real risk. In late November a wave caught him on the beach below the Manneporte, swept him off his feet and carried away his easel and paints. The writer Guy de Maupassant, who had a house at Étretat, described Monet at work that autumn, followed by children carrying five or six canvases, waiting for the light and switching from one to another as it changed.

How it was painted

The sunlight is low and comes from the left, catching only the tops of the rocks. Look at the Aiguille: its shadowed lower part is painted in cool greys and greens, its lit summit in warm pinks and yellows laid thickly, and the line between them is the line of the sun. Monet uses the same split on the arch and the cliff face, where the lit crest is a crust of orange and cream above walls of horizontal grey-green strokes that follow the chalk's flint bands.

The sea is made of short horizontal strokes of blue, green, lilac and white, set close together and getting finer toward the horizon; nothing is blended. The boats are dots of red, and their presence tells us how big the rocks are. The pink of the sand echoes the pink of the lit rock, so warm color frames the cool sea on both sides.

The motif and its siblings

The Porte d'Aval and the Aiguille were Étretat's most famous sight, painted before Monet by Delacroix, Courbet and Boudin. Monet painted them in many lights in 1885: compare Étretat, La Porte d'Aval: Fishing Boats Leaving the Harbour in Dijon and The Departure of the Boats, Étretat in Chicago, and the next year's The Cliffs at Étretat in Moscow. Just west of this view lies the even larger arch of the Manneporte, in The Manneporte and La Manneporte, Reflections on the Sea. The working beach on the other side of the bay appears in The Beach at Étretat.

Where to see it

The painting is in the Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, founded on the collection of Sterling and Francine Clark, which is rich in French nineteenth-century painting. For museums worldwide, see where to see Monet's paintings, and for the artist, Claude Monet.