Image: public domain, courtesy of The Art Institute of Chicago

Cliff Walk at Pourville

Claude Monet, 1882

Two young women in summer dresses stand on a windy, grassy cliff above the sea at Pourville, a fishing village in Normandy. Monet painted the grass, the dresses and the waves with quick, lively strokes, so the whole scene seems to move in the breeze.

🧩 Build this painting as a puzzle

🏛 Enter the 3D museum

🎧 Audio guide available in the 3D museum

Did you know?

In 1882 alone, Monet painted nearly a hundred pictures of the Normandy coast.
The two women may be the daughters of Alice Hoschedé, whose family lived together with Monet's.
Monet laid wet paint into wet paint, so the colours blend and smear right on the canvas.
He came back to many of these seaside pictures again and again, sometimes for ten to twenty painting sessions.
X-rays show that Monet made the dark rocky cliff on the right smaller to balance the sea and the sky.
Look for the tiny sailing boats on the horizon, out on the English Channel.

About the artist

Claude Monet (1840–1926) was born in Paris, grew up by the sea in Le Havre, and from 1883 lived and painted at Giverny in Normandy.

He was the guiding spirit of Impressionism, which took its name from his painting Impression, Sunrise, and he is beloved for his haystacks, cathedrals and water lilies.

As a teenager he earned pocket money drawing funny caricatures of local people, and later he lovingly tended a garden with a Japanese bridge that he painted again and again.

Claude Monet ›

Where it is today: The Art Institute of Chicago · Museum page