The Beach at Sainte-Adresse

This is a wide seascape in oil paint on canvas, about a meter across, so it is a little wider than it is tall. A pebbly beach fills the lower part of the picture, and the sea and a large sky open out above it. Dark-sailed fishing boats drift on the water. Others are pulled up onto the shore, with groups of fishermen and their equipment gathered around them. It looks at first like a traditional coastal scene, a working beach in northern France, painted in the summer of 1867.

Look at the beached boats on the shore. They frame two figures sitting on the shoreline, and these are the easiest people to miss and the most important. A man in a dark hat and suit looks through a telescope. Beside him sits a woman in a straw hat with a scarlet ribbon. A few strokes of red and yellow paint make them stand out. Then look out at the water, where the dark sails of the fishing boats drift. Compare the working fishermen with this relaxed pair.

Claude Monet stayed with his aunt at Sainte-Adresse in the summer of 1867. It was a place he knew well, because he had grown up in the area. He began this painting outdoors and revised it later in his studio. Conservation research, which means scientific study of a painting's layers, has shown that he first included more tourist figures and some yachts. He later painted over them. In the end he shifted his focus to the fishermen, the part of local life he knew best.

The area changed a great deal in Monet's lifetime. As the French rail network grew, Sainte-Adresse turned from a small, rural fishing village into a seaside resort for tourists. The couple with the telescope are undoubtedly vacationers, judging by their fashionable clothes. Their presence turns a traditional coastal scene into a painting of modern life, one of Monet's first explorations of tourism. He showed it at the second Impressionist exhibition in 1876. Look once more at the two figures, and ask how a few small strokes of color can mark a whole new way of life.