Heavy Sea at Pourville

Throughout his life Monet painted one of his favorite motifs, the landscapes of the sea and sky of his home region of Normandy. This subject can be said to have been bequeathed to Monet by his teacher Boudin. Yet while the numerous works that remain by Boudin focus on genre elements, Monet was interested in the landscape itself. As opposed to the techniques used in the majority of his other landscapes, Monet employed a rhythmic blending of rough brush strokes and a very light layering of pigment in this work created in a small fisherman's hut by the beach. The brushwork is very slight on the light sparkles of the calm surface of the sea and thickens and becomes more agitated as the artist depicts an instant impression of peaking waves and scudding clouds. While quite distant from the brushwork roots of the original Impressionism, the free brushwork found in Monet's final works is prefigured here. (Source: Masterpieces of the National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo, 2009, cat. no.75)