Maybe I’m just being contrarian, but I don’t think the water or the beach are very good in this painting. The wheat, greenery, cliffs and clouds are great, but the water and beach are kind of monotonous blobs that frankly aren’t that great in this painting.

If you take anything away from this post, let it be that Claude Monet had no idea how to paint water and I dare anyone to prove me wrong! That should be a reasonable idea to defend.