配色-普维尔悬崖散步Cliff Walk at Pourville

作者：Claude Monet Oscar-Claude Monet

作品名称：Cliff Walk at Pourville

中文名称：普维尔悬崖散步

创作时间：1882 年

画作尺寸：66.5 × 82.3 cm

绘画类型：布面油画

流派：印象派

题材：风景画

收藏于：The Art Institute of Chicago

In February 1882, Claude Monet went to Normandy to paint, one of the many such expeditions he undertook in the 1880s. It was also an escape from personal and professional pressures. His wife Camille had died three years earlier, and Monet had signed a family pact with Alice Hoschedé (Monet married her after her husband's death in 1892). France was in the midst of a long economic recession, which affected Monet's sales. Moreover, the artist was not enthusiastic about the upcoming seventh Impressionist exhibition - by which time divisions within the group had become apparent - and he entrusted his responsibility for contributions to his dealer, Paul Durand-Rouel.

Disillusioned with the surrounding area, Monet found the port city of Dieppe too urban and settled in Purville, where he stayed until mid-April. Increasingly enamored with his surroundings, he wrote to Horsted and her children: "How beautiful the countryside has become, and how happy it would be if I could show you all its delightful nooks and crannies!" He was able to do just that when they joined him in Purville in June.

The two young women strolling along the "Pullville Cliff Walk" may have been Hoschedd's eldest daughters, Marte and Blanche. In this work, Monet tackles the problem of inserting figures into the landscape without destroying the unity of its painted surface. He fuses these elements with each other through texture and color. The grass is made up of short, brisk, curved brushstrokes that seem to flutter in the breeze, while subtly modified versions of the same brushstrokes and tones allude to the women's windswept skirts and shawls and the undulations of the sea. X-ray imaging of the work shows that Monet reduced the rocky outcrops on the far right to balance the proportions of sea and sky.