The Beach at Sainte-Adresse

A wide expanse of beach under a dramatic sky captures the changing face of Sainte-Adresse in 1867. Dark-sailed fishing boats dot the water, their presence a nod to the village's traditional life. On the shore, groups of fishermen tend to their equipment, their figures grounding the scene in local industry. The painting then draws your eye to two figures, highlighted by touches of red and yellow, seated in the foreground: a man peering through a telescope and a woman in a straw hat with a scarlet ribbon. These fashionably dressed vacationers signal the transformation of this once-rural fishing village into a popular seaside resort, an early exploration of tourism by the artist. This work, begun outdoors and later revised in the studio, originally included more tourists and yachts, but these were painted over, shifting the focus to the fishermen, a world the painter knew intimately from his youth in the area.