Monet and Turner, Masters of Sea and Sky

Abstract

Claude Monet, a founding member of the Impressionist movement, and Joseph Mallord William Turner, often described as England’s greatest painter, are both famous for spectacular landscapes accurately capturing the changing nature of skies and seas. Astronomical considerations of daylight, twilight, night skies, and tides can be used to enhance our understanding of the creative process for these artists. Monet painted a dramatic scene in his The Cliff, Étretat, Sunset, created in 1883 at a popular resort on the Normandy coast. The canvas shows the orange disk of the Sun sinking toward the horizon near a spectacular line of cliffs and an arch called the Porte d’Aval. In the background, behind the arch, rises a pyramid-like rock formation called the Needle.