Introduction

The Manneporte (Étretat) is a fabulous painting painted by Claude Monet (1840–1926) in 1883. The dimensions of this painting is 65.4 x 81.3 cm and the medium of it is oil on canvas. And it is located at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. According to different features, this painting is one of the works of the Impressionism. In this essay, there will be fall into several parts. Firstly, the historical information of Impressionism and the reason of how the work fits into Impressionism would be mentioned. Then it will move to the analysis of the paint. Last but not least, there would be some reflection on this painting.

Historical background

In the 19th century, scientists found that the sunlight contains seven colors in which red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet. This impressed some painters that the color of an item is affected by light. In the meantime, photography was being more general. Painting was facing a big challenge because it started losing the function of recording things.[1] Therefore, some painters turned to concern with the changes in light and color. These features led to the development of the Impressionism.

In order to study the color and light, Monet painted serval series of paintings in a single object under different weather or light conditions. [2]

How the work fits into Impressionism

“…the more I go on, the more I see that a lot of work has to be done in order to render what I seek: