Low Tide at Pourville, near Dieppe, 1882

Painted during Monet’s extended working stays on the Normandy coast in 1882, this view of the beach at Pourville belongs to the group of canvases that established his mastery of the sea and its mutable light. The resort village near Dieppe drew Monet back repeatedly in the early 1880s, and the low-tide strand with its exposed wet sand gave him the shifting reflections he loved. It comes from a period of intense, rapid production that decisively confirmed the Impressionist method.