Cliffs East of Pourville

Painted in 1896 — over a decade after his intensive Étretat campaigns — Cliffs East of Pourville shows Monet returning to the Norman coast with an eye sharpened by intervening series work on haystacks, poplars, and Rouen Cathedral. The Pourville area, where he had worked intensively in 1882, offered cliff formations distinct from Étretat's famous arches: broader, more gently curving headlands rather than dramatic rock needles. By 1896 Monet's technique had evolved toward longer paint strokes and more nuanced color relationships, the cliffs functioning as much as studies in atmospheric color as topographical records. The painting's untraced museum location suggests it remains in private ownership.

Oil on canvas with the more assured, gestural brushwork characteristic of Monet's later serial work. The cliff mass is built from long curving strokes following the geological contours, while the sea below is indicated with shorter horizontal marks — the whole unified by the overcast or sunny atmospheric light falling across both.