Boats at Zaandam

Holland was a destination for landscape painters who wanted to distance themselves from Neoclassicism. Claude Monet created a dozen views of the port of Zaandam near Amsterdam and the buildings on the dam at different times of day between June and October 1871. The billowing pennants of the sailboat masts show the direction in which the wind is blowing and indicate that Monet had the ambition to achieve photographic accuracy.