Rising Tide at Pourville (Marée montante à Pourville)

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).