Praia de Sainte-Adresse, França (The Beach at Sainte-Adresse) - Claude Monet

Praia de Sainte-Adresse, França (The Beach at Sainte-Adresse) - Claude Monet
Sainte-Adresse - França
The Art Institute of Chicago, Estados Unidos
OST - 75x102 - 1867

In the summer of 1867, Claude Monet stayed with his aunt at Sainte-Adresse, an affluent suburb of the port city of Le Havre, near his father’s home. The paintings he produced that summer, few of which survive, reveal the beginnings of the young artist’s development of the revolutionary style that would come to be known as Impressionism. In his quest to capture the effects of shifts in weather and light, Monet painted The Beach at Sainte-Adresse out-of-doors on an overcast day. He devoted the majority of the composition to the sea, sky, and beach. These he depicted with broad sheets of color, animated by short brushstrokes that articulate gentle azure waves, soft white clouds, and pebbled ivory sand.

While fishermen go about their chores, a tiny couple relaxes at the water’s edge. Monet did not exhibit this work publicly for almost ten years after he completed it. In 1874 he banded together with a diverse group of like-minded, avant-garde artists to mount the first of what would be eight independent exhibitions. He included Sainte-Adresse in the second of these Impressionist shows, in 1876.