Painting Detail
Steep Cliffs near DieppeArtist: Claude Monet
Medium: Painting, Oil on canvas, 65x100.5 cm
Date: 1897
Genre: Landscape
Source: State Museum of New Western Art, Moscow, 1948
Dieppe, in Normandy, attracted Monet with the romantic potential of the cliffs by the sea. But it was not only the severity and drama of the cliffs which drew him, for in the painting they seem to lose their majestic monumentality and the artist concentrates on light and air effects.
In the 1890s, the artist made particularly close study of effects of light and colour at different times of year and different times of the day, under different weather conditions and so on. An Impressionist to the core, faithful to the idea of conveying the dynamics of fleeting visual experiences, he created whole series of landscapes concentrating on one and the same motif, showing how nature changes depending on changes in the atmosphere and in the air.