The Lure of the Water: Impressionists at the Seashore

The Lure of the Water: Impressionists at the Seashore  is a special exhibition celebrating the ocean and beach scenes of Claude Monet, Berthe Morisot, Eugène Boudin, Gustave Calliebotte, and others who were attracted and inspired by the vistas and ambiance of the seashore. The rise in commerical travel and tourism in the second half of the nineteenth-century brought increased numbers of tourists and Parisian weekenders to the Normandy coast. While an earlier generation of landscape artists had painted these sites in escapist isolation, the Impressionist painters delighted in recording the holiday mood of such fashionable locales as Le Havre, Trouville, and Etretat. Tourism and recreation, rather than the landscape itself, became the subjects of their paintings.