The Manneport near Etretat

Claude Monet

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Keywords: ManneportEtretat

Work Overview

The Manneporte near Étretat
1883
Oil on canvas
32 x 25 3/4 in. (81.3 x 65.4 cm)
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York


In 1886, the writer Guy de Maupassant published his eyewitness account of Monet at Étretat. "The artist walked along the beach, followed by children carrying five or six canvases representing the same subject at different times of the day and with different effects. He took them up and put them aside by turns according to changes in the sky and shadows." Monet painted the dramatically arched projection in the cliff at Étretat six times from this angle: twice during each of three visits to the Normandy coast in 1883, 1885, and 1886. He refined the pictures in his studio.


Étretat, a Norman fishing village popular among artists of Courbet's generation and, later, the Impressionists. Its great cliffs, rising so precipitously from the beach and from the waters provided a striking contrast to sand-bound or storm-tossed boats below, and with the ever-changing sea and sky.


One of the main features is a rock formation known as Porte d'Aval (or Aiouille), where a natural flying buttress appears to support an equally natural, crenellated tower. This sense of implicit architecture suggests a great city lost in primeval times. There are two other formations called Porte d'Amont, and the Manneporte.


The cliffs at Étretat inspired Monet, who was a frequent visitor to the Normandy coast from the 1860s onward.