What Monet’s Étretat Paintings Teach Us About Observing Landscape
- May 20
- 7 min read
Two weeks ago, I visited the exhibition Monet on the Normandy Coast. The Discovery of Étretat at the Städel Museum in Frankfurt. I originally went because I have always been fascinated by Monet’s coastal paintings, but I left realizing that the exhibition is about something much larger than Impressionism alone. It is about how a landscape becomes a visual identity.
The exhibition explores how the small Norman fishing village of Étretat transformed over almost two centuries into one of the most painted, photographed, and recognizable coastal landscapes in Europe. Around 170 paintings, drawings, photographs, and historical documents are included in the exhibition, featuring works by Claude Monet, Gustave Courbet, Eugène Delacroix, Henri Matisse, photographers, writers, and many lesser-known artists who all interpreted the cliffs differently. And while Monet may be the central figure, the exhibition makes something very clear: he did not discover Étretat alone.
Artists, writers, scientists, photographers, and travelers had already been drawn to the dramatic Norman coastline long before Monet arrived. Yet Monet’s paintings became some of the images that shaped how many people still imagine Étretat today.
Why Artists Were Drawn to Étretat in the 19th Century
Étretat is located on the Normandy coast along the English Channel, surrounded by dramatic white chalk cliffs and natural rock arches. Among the most famous formations are the Porte d’Amont, Porte d’Aval, and the Manneporte — cliffs and arches that became recurring motifs in Monet’s paintings.
Today, the place is famous worldwide. But in the early nineteenth century, Étretat was still relatively isolated. The exhibition explains how artists, scientists, and writers gradually became fascinated by the wild coastline during the Romantic era. The rough sea, changing weather, and dangerous cliffs represented what philosophers of the time described as the sublime — nature that felt overwhelming, powerful, and emotionally intense.
One thing I particularly appreciated in the exhibition was how carefully it showed the gradual artistic discovery of the place. Monet appears as part of a much bigger story. Artists like Eugène Isabey, Eugène Delacroix, Johann Wilhelm Schirmer, and Eugène Le Poittevin were already painting or studying Étretat decades before Monet’s famous series. Some artists focused on dramatic atmosphere. Others studied geology, rock formations, fishing life, or the relationship between sea and sky. The exhibition also explains how literature, railways, tourism, and later photography helped transform Étretat into an artistic myth.
And while walking through the exhibition, I kept thinking about something else: why certain landscapes become instantly recognizable? That thought strongly connected to another post I wrote recently Painting Iconic Silhouettes in Landscape Art: When Shape Becomes Identity.
Because Étretat is exactly that kind of place. Even simplified into only a few shapes, the cliffs remain identifiable. The silhouettes themselves became part of the artistic language.
How Claude Monet Painted the Cliffs of Étretat
Claude Monet visited Étretat at least six times between 1864 and 1886. During this period, he created around eighty paintings and several pastels dedicated to the Normandy coast.
What fascinated him was not only the shape of the cliffs themselves, but the constantly changing atmosphere around them. The exhibition repeatedly emphasizes Monet’s obsession with weather, changing light, wind, sea movement, and shifting color relationships.
To capture these differences, Monet often worked on several paintings simultaneously, switching between canvases depending on the weather and light conditions. This approach later became one of the defining characteristics of his serial painting method.
That idea became one of the strongest takeaways for me personally. Monet was not trying to “copy” the landscape. He was trying to observe transformation. The cliffs themselves barely changed, but the atmosphere around them changed constantly. And this is something I think many landscape painters still struggle with today. We often search for new subjects instead of learning how to see one subject more deeply. The exhibition quietly reminds us that repetition can sharpen perception.
What Landscape Painters Can Learn from Monet
One reason Monet’s Étretat paintings still feel alive today is because they are based on direct observation rather than visual perfection.
The exhibition explains that Monet deliberately avoided painting the fashionable tourist life developing around Étretat at the time. He excluded casinos, hotels, and bathing cabins from most of his paintings. Instead, he focused almost entirely on nature itself. He also preferred working outside the main tourist season so he could paint without interruption.
This creates an interesting contrast to today. When we travel somewhere famous now, we often experience it first through photos, Instagram posts, or social media expectations. But Monet approached the landscape differently. He observed patiently, repeatedly, and under changing conditions.
As painters, that matters enormously. A landscape is never only about shapes. It is also about
atmosphere, rhythm, temperature, light, movement, and emotional response.
This is something I experienced personally when visiting Étretat myself in 2022. I still remember standing near the cliffs and noticing something I had previously only heard painters talk about: blue shadows. Until then, shadows often simply felt “dark” to me. But standing there, observing the cool reflected light from the sky, I suddenly understood what painters mean when they speak about color temperature and reflected light. That moment stayed with me. And seeing Monet’s paintings years later immediately brought this memory back. His works captured exactly this sensitivity to atmosphere and subtle color relationships that are so difficult to fully understand from photographs alone.
How Photography Influenced Monet and Landscape Painting
One of the most interesting sections of the exhibition focuses on early photography. The exhibition includes historical photographs of Étretat from the 1850s and 1860s, showing how photography became increasingly accessible and started influencing how landscapes were documented and perceived. Photographers like Alphonse Davanne experimented with early photographic studies of the coastline, while other photographers attempted to capture waves, movement, and changing weather conditions.
What I found fascinating is that the exhibition does not present photography and painting as opposites. Instead, they influenced each other continuously. Photography inspired painters. Painters inspired photographers.
This immediately reminded me of another topic I explored previously in my post Why Copying Photos Doesn’t Work: How Composition Transforms Landscape Art. Photography captures everything equally.Painting depends on interpretation. And Étretat is a perfect example of this difference.
The exhibition includes several moments where photographs and paintings almost seem to “answer” one another visually. Some artists simplified forms dramatically, others exaggerated atmosphere or edge relationships, while photographers experimented with movement and exposure time. The camera documents. The artist interprets. And often, that interpretation is what creates emotional depth.
What Monet’s Pastels Reveal About Edges and Atmosphere
One of my personal highlights of the exhibition was seeing Monet’s pastels. The exhibition includes three pastel works by Monet, and seeing them in person was incredibly inspiring, especially because soft pastel is my primary medium. What surprised me most was how structurally expressive they felt.
The exhibition text explains how Monet translated the sediment layers of the cliffs into cloud structures and atmospheric forms. That observation immediately reminded me of one of the most important concepts in landscape painting: edges. Hard edges attract attention. Soft edges create atmosphere. Lost edges create space.
Monet constantly shifted between these approaches depending on light, weather, and distance. In some areas the cliffs dissolve into mist and sky. In others, sharp rock structures suddenly emerge with clarity. Seeing these works in person also reinforced something I often notice while painting landscapes myself: atmosphere is usually built through transitions, not details.
How Different Artists Interpreted Étretat
Another strength of the exhibition is how it compares very different artistic approaches to the same landscape.
Gustave Courbet approached the sea with dramatic physical force, applying paint thickly with palette knives to create rough, almost sculptural waves.
Eugène Delacroix explored subtle color relationships between cliffs, sky, and sea.
Henri Matisse later reduced the landscape to simplified shapes and color relationships during his visits in 1920.
Seeing all these interpretations together reinforces something important: There is no single “correct” way to paint a landscape. The same motif can become atmospheric, dramatic,
abstract, emotional, or symbolic, depending on what the artist chooses to observe. And perhaps this is exactly why Étretat remained artistically relevant for so long.
Why the Étretat Exhibition Matters for Landscape Artists Today
One aspect of the exhibition that feels surprisingly contemporary is its discussion of tourism and image-making. The very artists who helped immortalize Étretat also contributed to turning it into a destination. Today, the cliffs attract around 1.5 million visitors every year, while erosion and overtourism increasingly threaten the fragile coastline.
The exhibition even draws parallels between nineteenth-century artistic popularization and modern social media culture, where visitors still frame the landscape in ways that hide the crowds around them.
That idea stayed with me long after leaving the museum. Because in many ways, artists still shape how people experience landscapes today. And perhaps that makes observation more important than ever. Not just painting what a place looks like. But understanding how it feels, how it changes, and why it continues to inspire people across generations.
Visiting the Exhibition
Monet on the Normandy Coast. The Discovery of Étretat runs at the Städel Museum from 19 March until 5 July 2026.
The exhibition is exceptionally well organized, with thoughtful spatial planning and one of the best free audio guides I have used in a museum in a long time. The pacing between rooms feels calm and deliberate, allowing visitors to slow down and really observe the works.
The exhibition also opens with an immersive projection installation of the Étretat cliffs, which creates a strong atmospheric introduction before entering the historical sections.
If you are interested in Impressionism, landscape painting, Monet, or the relationship between art and observation, this exhibition is absolutely worth visiting!
More information check the official website of the Städel Museum.
Thank you for this fabulous insight into what must be a spectacular exhibition. Your observations and careful analysis are valuable learning tools. Much appreciated,Natalia!