Monet in Pourville, Normandy Coast, 1882

Claude Monet, Plage de Pourville, 1882. Oil on canvas (60 X 73 cm). © National Museum in Poznań, Poland.

Writing about the recovery of Poland’s only Monet painting, The Beach at Pourville (Plage de Pourville), recently got me doing more research on his time on the Normandy coast. Most people, with even the slightest interest in Monet’s work, are aware of his house and gardens in Giverny and that he made a few paintings along the Normandy coast. But the time Monet spent on the Normandy coast over a period of 7 years produced a group of paintings that far outnumber all others. And one of his more prolific years was 1882 when he spent a few months at Pourville in Winter, and then returned there later with his family in the summer.

This photograph looks over the town of Pourville, southwards towards the cliffs and other settings Monet painted at Varengeville and Petit Ailly in 1882. The photograph was taken from a point above the cliffs in the middle of Monet's painting of Pourville beach above.

Pourville in Monet’s time was a small fishing village on the Norman coast just south of the city of Dieppe. Today there is a good supplier of oysters, but other than that it is a place where the better off have their summer houses, or commuters to Dieppe live.

In 1882 Monet stayed in Pourville for 7 very productive weeks starting early February. Encouraged by the reception of his Norman coast at the seventh Impressionist exhibition in March, Paris, he returned again that year in the summer, but this time bringing his and Alice’s families with him. From early February to early April, and then again from mid-June to early October, Monet painted over 90 paintings in and near to Pourville.

Looking at his letters to his agent of that year, it is generally accepted that he was driven by financial necessity. None the less, he still produced some of his more well known, and highly thought after paintings, including the various paintings of the fisherman’s and coastguard’s cottages on the cliffs between Pourville and Varengeville, the numerous cliffs he painted at Pourville, Pointe d’Ailly and Varengeville, and of course the church of Varengeville.

Looking northwards towards Pourville (and on to Dieppe in the distance) from the beach below much the same point above the cliffs where Monet must have painted ‘Plage de Pourville’ above.