Low Tide at Pourville, near Dieppe

Claude Monet

Oil on canvas

Brooklyn Museum

This luminous Impressionist seascape captures the dramatic cliffs and sand flats of Pourville, a charming fishing village on the Normandy coast of France. Claude Monet (1840-1926), the pioneering French Impressionist master, painted this work during an extended retreat to the coast in 1882, escaping personal grief and financial pressures following his first wife's death. With quick, spontaneous brushstrokes that evoke the shifting effects of light, weather, and tide, the painting exemplifies Monet's revolutionary approach to capturing fleeting moments in nature, making it a stunning piece that brings the atmospheric beauty of the French coastline into any home.