The Green Wave

The artwork

A dark green wave lifts a sailing boat: Monet painted it as a young man on the coast of Normandy, and when it was shown a critic wrote that Manet's hand could be seen in it. You receive it printed on handmade Amalfi paper, in a handmade frame.

• Heavy seas, the white crests of the waves and a sailing boat heeling in the wind.
• Deep greens and stormy greys: a strong picture for a light-coloured wall.
• A gift for anyone who loves the sea and sailing.

Monet had grown up in Le Havre, a port in Normandy, and in 1866 and 1867 he went back to that coast several times to paint the sea. He was just over twenty-five.

In those same years Édouard Manet, the painter everyone in Paris was arguing about, had painted the American warships off the French coast, with a very high horizon and the sea filling almost the whole canvas. Monet may have seen those pictures in Paris, and here he does the same: the sky is a thin strip, and the rest is moving water.

When the picture was shown at the Impressionist exhibition of 1879, a critic wrote that it was directly influenced by Manet. Years later Monet dated it 1865, a couple of years too early. The original is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

In a study, a hallway or a seaside home it brings all the strength of the open sea. It is a gift for anyone who sails, or who cannot stay away from the coast.

Unique quality material

Print on handmade Amalfi paper
Sheet size: 29 x 42 cm (11.4 x 16.5 in)
With frame: 31 x 44 cm (12.2 x 17.3 in)
Material: artwork printed on very fine handmade Amalfi paper with deckled edges
Frame: dark brown with gold fillet, handmade, with glass