Interpretive Resource

In February 1882, Claude Monet went to Normandy to paint, one of many such expeditions that he made in the 1880s. This was also a retreat from certain personal and professional pressures. His wife, Camille, had died three years earlier, and Monet had entered into a domestic arrangement with Alice Hoschedé, the wife of a former patron, Ernest Hoschedé (Monet and Alice Hoschedé would marry in 1892, after Ernest Hoschedé’s death). France was in the midst of a lengthy economic recession that affected Monet’s sales. In addition the artist was unenthusiastic about the upcoming seventh Impressionist exhibition—divisions within the group had become pronounced by this time—and he delegated the responsibility for his contribution to his dealer, Paul Durand-Ruel.

Uninspired by the area around the harbor city of Dieppe, which he found too urban, Monet settled in Pourville and remained in this fishing village until mid-April. He became increasingly enamored of his surroundings, writing to Alice Hoschedé and her children: "How beautiful the countryside is becoming, and what joy it would be for me to show you all its delightful nooks and crannies!" He was able to do so in June, when the Monet-Hoschedé family rented a house in Pourville.

The two young women taking a stroll in Cliff Walk at Pourville are probably Marthe and Blanche, the eldest Hoschedé daughters. In this work, Monet addressed the problem of inserting figures into a landscape without disrupting the unity of his painterly surface. He also integrated natural elements with one another through texture and color. The grass, composed of short, brisk, curved brush strokes, appears to quiver in the breeze, and subtly modified versions of the same strokes and hues convey the undulation of the sea. The composition sings with wind and sparkles with sunlight, reflecting Monet’s increasing freedom from the metropolitan world.