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The Beach at Trouville

Claude Monet1870

The National Gallery, London

The National Gallery, London
London, United Kingdom

This painting is one of five beach scenes produced by Monet in the summer of 1870, which may have been preparatory sketches for a larger painting that Monet intended to submit to the Salon. The figure to the left is probably Monet's wife Camille, and the woman on the right may be the wife of Eugène Boudin, whose own beach scenes influenced the work of Monet. The painting is unusual in its composition - a close-up of symmetrically disposed figures - and in the bravura of its technique. The white dashes of paint indicating the dress of the left-hand figure are prominent. They contrast with the shadowed face, probably concealed by a veil, and the parasol shading the flowered hat.Grains of sand are present in the paint, confirming that it must have been at least partly executed outside on the beach.

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  • Title: The Beach at Trouville
  • Creator: Claude Monet
  • Date Created: 1870
  • Physical Dimensions: 38 x 46.5 cm
  • Type: Painting
  • Medium: Oil on canvas
  • School: French
  • More Info: Explore the National Gallery’s paintings online
  • Inventory number: NG3951
  • Artist Dates: 1840 - 1926
  • Artist Biography: Born in Paris, the son of a grocer, Monet grew up in Le Havre. Contact with Eugène Boudin in about 1856 introduced Monet to painting from nature. He was in Paris in 1859 and three years later he entered the studio of Charles Gleyre, where he met Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley and Frédéric Bazille. Edouard Manet was an influence on his figure compositions of the 1860s, while the informal style of his later landscapes originated in works such as 'Bathers at La Grenouillère', painted in 1869 when Monet worked with Renoir at Bougival. Monet was the leading French Impressionist landscape painter. Like Camille Pissarro and Charles-François Daubigny, Monet moved to London during the Franco-Prussian war (1870-1). After his return to France he lived at Argenteuil (1871-8). He exhibited in most of the Impressionist exhibitions, beginning in 1874, where the title of one of his paintings led to the naming of the movement. A period of travel followed in the 1880s, and in 1883 he acquired a property at Giverny, north-west of Paris. Thereafter Monet concentrated on the production of the famous series showing a single subject in different lighting conditions, including poplars, haystacks, Rouen Cathedral, and his own garden at Giverny.
  • Acquisition Credit: Bought, Courtauld Fund, 1924
The National Gallery, London

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