Regatta at Sainte-Adresse

Monet spent the summer of 1867 at Sainte-Adresse, a well-to-do suburb of Le Havre on the Normandy coast. On June 25, he reported that he had about twenty pictures under way, noting, "Among the seascapes, I am doing the regattas of Le Havre with many figures on the beach and the outer harbor covered with small sails." This sunny regatta, watched at high tide by well-dressed bourgeois, seems to have been conceived as a pair with The Beach at Sainte-Adresse (Art Institute of Chicago), an overcast scene at low tide, showing fishing boats hauled onto the beach, peopled with sailors and workers. (Source: The Metropolitan Museum of Art)