Cliffs at Ouessant, Brittany

Henry Moret painted the cliffs of Ouessant — the remote Breton island in the Atlantic — as part of his sustained campaign to capture the rugged landscapes of Brittany and its offshore islands. Moret had worked with Gauguin at Pont-Aven in the late 1880s and retained a bold approach to color and form. By 1901 he had established a distinctive style of Breton coastal painting that emphasized the drama of exposed headlands and raw Atlantic weather. Ouessant, battered by the full force of Atlantic storms, provided exactly the kind of elemental scenery he sought to translate into paint.

Moret renders the cliff face with vigorous, loaded brushstrokes that convey the geological mass of the rock. His color is more intense than naturalism demands — the sea registers in vivid blues and greens, the cliffs in warm ochres and reds. Short directional strokes describe the surface texture of weathered Breton stone.