Beach of Sainte-Adresse

サン＝タドレスの海岸
聖=達特勒斯的海岸
圣=达特勒斯的海岸
생타드레스의 해안

Claude Monet, a leading artist of Impressionism, painted this when he was twenty-four years old. He had just begun studying painting. In the summer of 1864, Monet invited Frédéric Bazille, a friend at the private art school he attended in Paris, and together they returned to Monet’s hometown, Le Havre. Sainte-Adresse, where Monet’s father had a villa, was a popular summer resort in those days and it was a favorable beach for painting landscapes.

This painting is one of a number of paintings Monet did when he visited Sainte-Adresse again in October. It served as a study for a work he submitted to the Salon the following year. Whereas the painting submitted to the Salon was repainted in the studio to attain a smooth finish, this painting was probably finished on the beach. The coarse brushstrokes depicting the waves glimmering in the golden sunlight and the rough representation of the fishermen hauling up their boat or the boats on the shore convey even the harsh cold and the warmth of the light on a beach in the north with a real feeling. It is a work that seems to foretell of the birth of the Impressionist Monet ten years later.