Sainte-Adresse

Fishing boats rest on a sandy shore while a few figures stand nearby, and across the calm water rise cliffs and the buildings of a village under a clouded sky. This marine scene, painted in oil in 1867 by Claude Monet, is held at the National Gallery of Art, where it came to the collection as a gift from Catherine Gamble Curran and her family. Monet, who lived from 1840 to 1926 and worked in France, became associated with Impressionism and also painted Haystacks. The scene gives a sense of quiet daily labor along the coast, with the boats drawn up at rest and the water lying still beneath the overcast light, the distant village adding a soft note of human presence to the wide, open shoreline.