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Rising Tide at Pourville (Marée montante à Pourville)

Claude Monet

European Art

Inspired in part by Gustave Courbet’s marines of the 1860s, Claude Monet here conveys the choppy, windswept sea off the Normandy coast in forceful brushstrokes. He emphasizes the dramatic setting of the abandoned customhouse on the edge of the cliff (now gone, as a result of erosion) by cropping the right edge of the canvas and adopting a striking, elevated vantage point.

Monet made a number of paintings along this coast, working on several of them every day (he had to hire a porter to help him carry them all). Each could take as many as twenty sessions to finish. They were marketable back in Paris. In 1882, the year he made this painting, his dealer paid him a total of 31,000 francs (roughly equivalent to $175,000 today).
MEDIUM Oil on canvas
  • Place Made: France
  • DATES 1882
    DIMENSIONS 26 x 32 in. (66 x 81.3cm) Frame: 35 x 41 1/4 x 4 in. (88.9 x 104.8 x 10.2 cm)  (show scale)
    SIGNATURE Signed and dated lower right: "82 Claude Monet"
    COLLECTIONS European Art
    ACCESSION NUMBER 41.1260
    CREDIT LINE Gift of Mrs. Horace O. Havemeyer
    PROVENANCE July 28, 1883, purchased from the artist by Durand-Ruel, Paris, France; between 1883 and 1894, provenance not yet documented; January 16, 1894, purchased at Durand-Ruel by Henry Osborne Havemeyer and Louisine Waldron Elder Havemeyer of New York, NY; 1929, inherited from Louisine Havemeyer by Horace Havemeyer and Doris A. Dick Havemeyer (Mrs. Horace Havemeyer); January 8, 1942, gift of Doris Havemeyer to the Brooklyn Museum.
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    MUSEUM LOCATION This item is not on view
    CAPTION Claude Monet (French, 1840-1926). Rising Tide at Pourville (Marée montante à Pourville), 1882. Oil on canvas, 26 x 32 in. (66 x 81.3cm). Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Mrs. Horace O. Havemeyer, 41.1260 (Photo: Brooklyn Museum, 41.1260_PS11.jpg)
    IMAGE overall, 41.1260_PS11.jpg. Brooklyn Museum photograph, 2022
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