View of Berneval

This 1900 canvas at the Norton Simon Museum depicts Berneval, a small village on the Normandy coast near Dieppe. Pissarro visited the Normandy coast regularly in the late 1890s and early 1900s, attracted by the coastal light and the picturesque rural life of fishing villages and cliff-top hamlets. Berneval offered a quieter alternative to the more visited resorts and provided subjects that connected to his earlier rural practice at Pontoise and Éragny. The coastal views he produced there are less well-known than his Paris series but show the same attentiveness to how light transforms a specific locale. This work exemplifies his late ability to capture the essence of a French landscape with directness and economy.

Coastal light is suggested through a pale, luminous palette with silvery sky tones and green-grey ground. Pissarro's marks are confident and economical, establishing spatial recession through tonal gradation. The characteristic dappled technique he developed at Éragny is applied here to a coastal rather than agricultural setting.