The Cliff Walk at Pourville

Two women with parasols stand on a windswept grassy clifftop high above a sparkling, choppy sea, the grass and their dresses ruffled by the breeze under a luminous sky. Monet painted this on the Normandy coast at Pourville, balancing the solid headland against the shifting blue of the water and air. Now in the Art Institute of Chicago, the Cliff Walk at Pourville is a radiant Impressionist seascape - figures, cliff, and sea woven together in flickering color and light, the freshness of sun and wind on a high coastal walk caught in a single bright moment.