The Cliff Etretat Sunset

Along the coast of Normandy sits the fishing town of Étretat, where nature carved a giant stone arch and a lone needle of rock straight out of the sea. Claude Monet came back to this spot over and over, fascinated by the way the light kept changing the mood of the cliffs. In this 1883 painting he caught the hush of sunset, with a tiny red sun sinking toward the horizon. Cool blues and purples wrap the rocks and water, which makes the soft pinks and oranges glowing in the sky feel even warmer.

The loose, hurried brushwork here is pure Impressionism, the style Monet helped invent. Rather than fussing over every detail, he chased the overall feeling of a passing moment, often painting outside while the weather and daylight shifted around him. The flickering dabs of color across the water almost seem to ripple. Monet was not the first artist drawn to these cliffs, since Gustave Courbet had painted them before, but his obsession with light and color turned the scene into something entirely his own.