View of Saint-Valéry-sur-Somme

Degas made a series of landscape pastel monotypes in the early 1890s — an unusual departure from his characteristic focus on figure subjects — including views of Saint-Valéry-sur-Somme on the Picardy coast, where he travelled in 1898. The landscapes were produced largely through the monotype process, in which ink was applied to a metal plate and pressed onto paper, then worked over with pastel. These works reveal a side of Degas's practice rarely visible in his major figure compositions: a sensory, almost atmospheric response to coastal light and the flat northern landscape.

The Saint-Valéry view employs the monotype base with pastel overpainted in the characteristic broad, directional strokes of Degas's late works. The landscape is reduced to horizontal bands of earth, water, and sky, with the artist's interest in pure colour and tonal atmosphere overriding any concern for topographic description.