If the subject of the representation of the sea in impressionism can seem banal, it was however only partially mentioned, especially from the angle of seaside leisure with beach scenes, maritime views, or portraits of summer visitors. However, there remain certain other themes to be addressed which allow the exhibition to give a different vision of the impressionist artists’ attraction to the open sea.

Wasn’t impressionism born at the water’s edge?Impression, soleil levant by Claude Monet (1872, Paris, musée Marmottan Monet), is first of all a marine which sacrifices to a genre already magnified by Gustave Courbet or Eugène Boudin before him.Pissarro, Manet, Gauguin and Jongkind represented the seaside with delicacy and originality.

This vision of the landscape has thus been well understood by researchers, who have often focused on the effects of the sun, but also on the originality of the points of view, the photographic framing or the lifestyle of summer visitors during the Impressionist era. Nevertheless, there remain subjects which are specific to maritime life at the time of the Impressionists and which have not been considered: life in ports, the maritime industry, transport at sea, but also storms or even the taste for elsewhere…

Beyond a generic and pleasant image of the Impressionists in Deauville or Cabourg, the subjet can be declined according to new thematic and chronological perspectives. The impressionist movement is not homogeneous and the treatment of the subject of the navy and the seaside differs according to temperaments, but also the specific concerns of each artist.

What do Monet and Renoir have in common?Likewise, Pissarro does not see Le Havre like Monet. The geographical scope is quite limited: the artists’ stays are focused between Normandy and the French Riviera. If a focus is proposed on the treatment of the navy in Normandy, the exhibition will also look at the subject of impressionism in Brittany, with the works of Maxime Maufra and Henry Moret, both strongly influenced by Monet.

In the Impressionism and the sea exhibition, famous masterpieces such as La Vague by Courbet (1870, Orléans, Musée des Beaux-Arts) or L’Évasion de Rochefort by Manet (1881, Paris, Musée d’Orsay), are in dialogue with little-known works, thus creating a fruitful exchange between paintings, drawings and prints.

Musée des impressionnismes Giverny