Val-Saint-Nicolas, near Dieppe (Morning)

Claude Monet's Val-Saint-Nicolas, near Dieppe (Morning) was painted in early 1897 on the Normandy coast, during his last campaign on the cliffs he had first explored fifteen years earlier. A rounded headland covered in grass and heather juts out over the sea, and everything, cliff, water and sky, is softened by the pale haze of early morning. The canvas, 64.8 by 100 centimeters (Wildenstein 1466), is signed and dated "Claude Monet 97" in red at lower right. It has been in the Phillips Collection in Washington since 1959.

What you are looking at

The composition is split on a diagonal. On the right, the land rises in two great rounded masses: a nearer headland whose bare face drops sharply to the sea in ocher and rose, and a farther, higher slope behind it. Their tops are covered in grass and low vegetation painted in pale green, lilac, pink and cream, with small, separate strokes that catch the light like dew.

On the left, the sea stretches away to a horizon that is barely there. The water is a pale, milky lilac and gray-green, and it merges with a sky of almost the same tone, pale pink, peach and cream. Far off, a faint line of cliffs and the hint of a further headland run along the coast and disappear into the mist.

The Phillips Collection describes the work as a representative example of Monet's technique, where contours dissolve into light, and that is exactly what happens at the edge of the cliff. Its outline is soft, almost furred, and its color blends into the haze. Only the warm, ocher face of the near rock and the red signature give the picture any hard accent.

Where and when

Monet first painted around Dieppe, Pourville and Varengeville in 1882. In 1896 he returned, and again from January to April 1897, now working in series: he painted the same few motifs, the clifftop, the gorge of Val-Saint-Nicolas, the customs house, at different hours, often in fog or mist. The Val-Saint-Nicolas is one of the small valleys that cut through the chalk cliffs west of Dieppe. In the same campaign he made Cliffs East of Pourville, Steep Cliffs near Dieppe, now in the Hermitage, and On the Cliff at Dieppe, which entered the Musée d'Orsay in 2023.

How this version differs

The subtitle, Morning, is the key. Monet painted the Val-Saint-Nicolas view at several times of day, and this version records the first, soft light, when the mist has not yet lifted. Compared with the warm, golden light of On the Cliff at Dieppe or the overcast evening of the Hermitage picture, this is the palest and most diffuse. It also differs sharply from the bright, clear views Monet painted on the same coast in 1882, like Clifftop Walk at Pourville, which are full of sunlight, color contrasts and figures. Fifteen years later, the people have gone, and the subject is light and air.

How it was painted

The surface is covered in small, close strokes of pastel color, built up thickly on the cliff and more thinly in the sea and sky. Monet keeps the values very close together, so that the eye has trouble finding edges. The few warmer, darker passages on the rock face are what make the rest of the picture look misty by contrast. It is a technique he was refining at the same moment in the Mornings on the Seine.

For Monet's paintings of this coast across his career, see Étretat and the Normandy Coast.

Ownership and where to see it

Duncan Phillips, founder of the Phillips Collection, had searched for many years for a Monet that satisfied him; he bought and later sold four others in the 1920s and 1930s before acquiring this canvas in 1959. He praised it as one of Monet's most beautiful works and thought it was not well enough known. Display varies; check the museum before visiting. See Where to See Monet's Paintings and Claude Monet.