Hôtel des Roches Noires

Hôtel des Roches Noires was painted at Trouville in 1870 during Monet's honeymoon with Camille, in the same productive Trouville summer that yielded The Beach at Trouville and several other beach scenes. The Hôtel des Roches Noires was the grandest hotel on the Trouville seafront, its terrace and flags establishing the social register of this fashionable resort. Monet depicts it from the boardwalk, the hotel façade looming above figures strolling in the wind, the French flags animated by the sea breeze — the same weather-animation of flags he would revisit in the Rue Montorgueil eight years later.

The flags snapping in the sea wind provide Monet's first exploration of flags as kinetic pictorial elements. The hotel façade is handled with broad, relatively flat strokes, while the figures on the terrace and boardwalk are indicated with the minimum of gestural marks. Sky and sea fill the upper and lower zones with atmospheric colour.