The Beach of Sainte-Adresse

The Beach of Sainte-Adresse, at Museum Barberini in Potsdam, is a Fauve canvas of 1906 that pits Dufy's vivid color ambitions directly against the Impressionist memory of the same location. The beach had been painted by Monet in 1867, and Dufy's version implicitly stakes out a more chromatic approach to coastal leisure. The Museum Barberini holds one of the most significant collections of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist works outside France.

Figures on the beach are blocked in with flat strokes of local color—blue, white, and ochre—without tonal modeling, their forms gesturally indicated against the sand and sea. The composition uses horizontal banding of beach, water, and sky as a structural scaffold for what is essentially a study in pure chromatic vibration.