An Impressionist Fascination

Claude Monet - The Rocks of Belle Ile (Rough Sea) - 1886 - Oil on canvas, 65 x 82 cm - Musée d'Orsay, Paris (click photo for larger image)French painter Claude Monet (1840-1926) was the founder and leader of the Impressionist movement in France. The movement's name, Impressionism, is derived from his work entitled “Impression, Sunrise” of 1873. Monet adhered to the principles of Impressionism throughout his long career and is considered the most consistently representative painter of that school, as well as one of the foremost painters of landscape in the history of art. At Etretat in Normandy, Monet was fascinated by the sheer cliffs and the bizarre shape of the Manneporte, an arch of rock. He returned to the subject over several years, and to the jagged crags and stormy Atlantic at Belle-Ile-en-Mer in Brittany. Using Impressionist dabs to establish an irregular pattern was almost as important in such a work as recording a striking view.