Claude Monet (1840 Paris - 1926 Giverny) Coastal Landscape ("Paysage côtier") Early sheet by the important Impressionist, showing a rock in front of a bay with a rowing boat, pier and beacon in Normandy. Monet and the sea had been closely linked since his childhood, after his family moved to the harbour town of Le Havre in Normandy in 1845. As early as 1856/57, the young Monet created a series of drawings of the Normandy coast. In 1862, he met the Dutch painter Johan Barthold Jongkind in Le Havre and the two worked together on landscape studies. Monet then went to Charles Gleyre's studio in Paris from 1862 to 1864, where Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley and Frédéric Bazille were among his fellow students and whom he joined. Monet and Bazille, as well as Jongkind and Eugène Boudin, who followed later, spent the summer painting on the Normandy Channel coast. Monet was allowed to show two seascapes at the Paris Salon in 1865. 9 years later, in 1874, Monet was one of the initiators of the self-organised, legendary first Impressionist exhibition in Paris together with Camille Pissarro, Auguste Renoir and Alfred Sisley, where he showed his 1872 painting "Impression, Soleil levant" (Impression, Sunrise) with a depiction of the morning harbour of Le Havre. Monet's painting and its reception contributed significantly to the spread of the term and name for the new style of Impressionism that emerged in the 1860s. Pencil a. white chalk/brown paper. L. and signature stamp "Claude Monet" (Lugt 1819b), dat. "1866" in pencil below the rock on the right side of the image. 19.7 cm x 27.4 cm. Frame. Provenance: Acquired in the late 1960s/early 1970s and since then in succession in a German family collection, according to their information from the collection of Michel Monet (1878-1966), Giverny. Pencil and white chalk on brown paper. Stamped with signature "Claude Monet" lower left, dated "1866" in pencil below the rock. Provenance: From the collection of Michel Monet (1878 - 1966), Giverny; acquired in the late 1960's or early 1970's, thence by descent to the present owner in a private collection in Germany.