Acquisition · On the Cliff near Dieppe by Claude Monet

This painting belongs to one of the artist’s final series. It doesn’t take the painter’s garden in Giverny as its motif, but rather Upper Normandy’s coastline and its cliffs. Familiar with the Alabaster Coast’s landscapes, which he had painted many times, the artist returned to spend two winters there, in 1896 and 1897, in order to recapture the atmosphere of its sites and their unique light. He studied its variations on some forty canvases, none of which has figured in Musée d’Orsay’s collection until now. On the Cliff near Dieppe joins The Cliff at Fécamp (National Museums Recovery(MNR) 223: work recovered after the Second World War and entrusted to the custody of the National Museums; see illustration below), which was painted during the same campaign, between January and March 1897. It complements an outstanding series of paintings documenting the painter’s output during those important years in which he saw his eye and his practice evolve in crucial fashion.

Bathed in iridescent light, this view of Dieppe’s cliffs as seen from Val Saint-Nicolas near Pourville, an endless marine landscape unfolds before our eyes, cadenced on the right by rocky promontories whose curves and counter-curves contrast with the horizontal line of the coast fading away into the distance. Monet’s subtle brushwork and vibrant colors, dominated by pinks and pale gold, evoke the sun’s first rays in the early morning. The impression of space and tranquility that emanates from it may well echo the peace of mind that Monet came looking for on this coastline, after a difficult period marked by bereavement and illness among his friends and family (the deaths of his painter friends Caillebotte and Morisot; his wife’s and daughters-in-law’s illnesses). Pourville’s coasts, which he had painted so often fifteen years earlier, brought him the peace he sought. “I’ve visited all my motifs; nothing has changed”, he wrote with relief. Nonetheless, he knew that the landscape was threatened by a development project aiming to “establish all sorts of English games there” (a shooting range and a golf course, which opened soon afterwards); “The navvies will soon be approaching my motifs”, he lamented. Finally, although he was awestruck by the site’s sheer beauty, Monet complained of the often difficult weather conditions: “gloomy weather, dull haze, icy wind”, he noted on January 20, even avowing, “I’m not joking. […] All you can count on to keep yourself warm is the fever of work”.

Working outdoors, in haste and discomfort, Monet nonetheless completed these canvases – including this painting – in the calm of the studio, as he did with all the works composing his series, harmonizing them and reworking his motifs, this time reexamined through the filter of memory. With its seeming instantaneousness, evoking dawn’s magical light and coastal sea spray, On The Cliff near Dieppe is one of Monet’s most “interiorized” landscapes. On this canvas, which he started outdoors, Monet also painted his memory of those cliffs – their “beautiful luminous reliefs”, “the sea loved by a faithful lover” (Gustave Geffroy, art critic and historian), remembered here with nostalgia and idealized by his masterful brushwork.

Remaining in Monet’s studio until 1903, when the artist put it up for sale at a charity auction held in aid of Victor Vignon (1847-1909, a painter who had taken part in the last four impressionist exhibitions), On the Cliff near Dieppe was last exhibited in 1910. The painting has only been published twice, and always in black and white: in the artist’s catalogue raisonné and when it was put up for auction in 1958, when it was added to the private collection where it has remained until now. Its arrival at Musée d’Orsay has enabled visitors to acquaint themselves with a little-known painting and appreciate the true worth of this series of Cliffs from 1896 and 1897, thanks to this superb example – which is also still in its original state (never relined). Its recent restoration, carried out on the occasion of its addition to the Museum’s collections, has brought out the full freshness of its colors and its remarkable pearly light.

On the Cliff near Dieppe is not currently on display at the Musée d'Orsay.

Author

• Paul Perrin, Director of Conservation and Collections, Musée d'Orsay