Rising Tide at Pourville

A rugged cliff edge rises above the sea, its brick structures and patches of greenery set against choppy blue-green water. Whitecaps break across the waves beneath a sky thick with clouds, giving the whole scene a restless, open-air energy. The coastal view shown here is Pourville-sur-Mer, rendered in a style of marine art that captures the shifting light and motion of the water. Claude Monet painted this oil work in 1882, and it is now held at the Brooklyn Museum, having come to the museum as a gift from Mrs. Horace O. Havemeyer. Monet, who lived from 1840 to 1926, was a French painter associated with Impressionism, a movement reflected in the loose, atmospheric handling of this seascape. One detail worth noticing is how the white-capped waves seem to churn and tumble beneath the overcast sky, lending the composition a sense of weather in motion.