The Belle-Ile Rocks, 1886 - by Claude Monet

The wildness of the sea is captured here by Monet's use of color, the dark blues and greens typical of a stormy day. The drama of this painting lies entirely in the stormy waves of the sea. Their power is complemented by the solid dark mass of the rocks. The movement of the waves is presented by using short brushstrokes and by laying different colors next to each other, so that a dark blue stroke may be placed alongside a green one.

A The menacing presence of the rocks actually takes up nearly the same amount of canvas space as the sea. By painting them as encroaching across to the bottom left of the painting, but losing ground to the sea in the top right-hand corner the eternal battle between land and sea.