The first thing you notice when you arrive on the Normandy coast is not the sweeping beaches or the dusky blue ocean, or even the towering white cliffs. The first thing that hits you are the vast skies and the extraordinary light. No matter where you stand, you are surrounded by a constantly shifting landscape: billowing clouds that form and swirl, stormy skies that roll and tumble, and dreamy sunsets in sugar-almond shades of pink and purple. It’s little wonder that this stretch of coast became a muse for some of the greatest painters of the 19th century.
I was in Yport, a small seaside town sandwiched between Fécamp and Étretat, standing alongside Sophie Justet, a local landscape artist working swiftly with her brushes and paints to capture the moment. Above us were cartoon-like clouds hovering in a hazy blue sky, casting shadows on the sheer cliffs of the Alabaster Coast. “I work with the light,” said Sophie, who has been painting the Normandy coastline for the last 30 years. “You need to work quickly because the light is constantly changing. Every time I get home, I feel as if I have been painting in an entirely new place because of the way the light changes the landscape.”
These fast-moving skies have long inspired artists and writers, but it was the Impressionist painters who, in the mid-19th century, made their name by reproducing these landscapes on canvas. The advent of passenger railways and portable metal paint tubes had allowed artists to escape their city studios, venturing to the coast and into the countryside. In doing so, they turned their backs on conventional subjects and traditional techniques, choosing instead to work, like Sophie, en plein air, capturing the beauty of nature in the moment.
“Working outdoors is wonderful,” said Sophie. “Like the Impressionists, I work outside whatever the weather. Although if it’s really bad, I will sit in my car to paint.”
Yport was just my first stop on an Impressionist-themed road trip that followed in the brushstrokes of some of France’s greatest artists. My journey traced the curves of the River Seine through Normandy and on to the bright lights of Paris, then south to Aix-en-Provence. Along the way I discovered the people and places that helped to shape this groundbreaking art movement 150 years ago. I also found that, as I travelled, I became just as keen to discover what it was about these areas that inspired such work.
“The advent of passenger railways and portable metal paint tubes allowed artists to escape their city studios”
IN SEARCH OF MONET
A short drive west of Yport lies Le Havre, France’s second-largest port, where a teenage Claude Monet first met landscape artist Eugène Boudin in 1858. Nicknamed the ‘King of the Skies’, it was Boudin who persuaded Monet to swap his sketchpad for a paint palette.
Monet later produced the iconic from a hotel room window overlooking the harbour 15 years after this meeting. It was this painting that earned what was then
