Monet on the Normandy Coast. The Discovery of Étretat

Press release

A successful conclusion to "Monet on the Normandy Coast": Over 250,000 visitors

An overwhelming public response with 252,148 visitors // "Monet on the Normandy Coast. The discovery of Étretat" one of the most successful exhibitions in the Städel's history

With over a quarter of a million visitors (252,148), the major highlight exhibition “Monet on the Normandy Coast. The Discovery of Étretat” came to a successful close yesterday. This makes the exhibition, following “Making van Gogh. A German Love Story” (2019/20), the most successful Städel exhibition of the past ten years and one of the five most-visited exhibitions in the history of the Städel Museum. With “Monet on the Normandy Coast”, open from19 March until 5 July, the Städel Museum explored the artistic discovery of Étretat. The former fishing village on the Normandy coast had a significant influence on modern painting: its impressive cliff landscape captivated numerous artists in the 19th century. Depictions of the coast by artists including Claude Monet, Gustave Courbet, Eugène Delacroix and Henri Matisse made this remote place famous beyond the borders of France. The exhibition brought together around 170 outstanding paintings, drawings, photographs and historical documents, including twenty-four works by Claude Monet alone, and highlighted the enduring fascination that Étretat continues to exert to this day. Due to high public demand, the exhibition was open daily from 23 June with extended opening hours until 9 pm.

“The exhibition ‘Monet on the Normandy Coast’ proved a real crowd-puller and was a resounding success throughout. We are delighted that, with more than 250,000 visitors, the exhibition will go down as one of the most successful in the history of the Städel Museum. My special thanks go to our visitors from near and far, as well as to all the generous patrons and supporters who made this project possible. The Städel Museum has once again demonstrated its ability to captivate audiences by offering diverse approaches to previously unexplored themes in art history. With our major autumn exhibition ‘Mary Magdalene. Sin. Pray. Love.’, we are continuing to examine extraordinary art-historical themes”, said Philipp Demandt, Director of the Städel Museum.

You can find the full press release here as a PDF.  

Press release 

Monet on the Normandy Coast. The Discovery of Étretat 
19 March – 5 July 2026
Exhibition Annex

The coastal town of Étretat has become a myth—and continues to fascinate to this day. The cliffs of Étretat, located in Normandy on the Atlantic coast, captivated numerous artists in the 19th century. From 19 March to 5 July 2026, the Städel Museum will present a major exhibition dedicated to the artistic discovery of the former fishing village of Étretat and its influence on modern painting. Around 170 exceptional paintings, drawings, photographs and historical documents on loan from leading French, German and other international museums as well as several private collections will be on display in Frankfurt. Among them are no fewer than twenty-four works by Claude Monet.  

Étretat played an important role in the emergence of a new style of painting that went down in art history as Impressionism. The artists were particularly interested in the distinctive cliff landscape, which they found both excitingly beautiful and threatening. Painters and writers travelled to Étretat, and it was through their works that this remote place became famous beyond France’s borders. Following an increase in tourism around 1850, Étretat developed into a popular seaside resort and meeting place for artists, intellectuals and the Parisian bourgeoisie. Gustave Courbet painted his famous wave pictures here; Guy de Maupassant elevated Étretat to a place of longing in his writing; and Maurice Leblanc’s fictional gentleman thief, Arsène Lupin, hoarded his treasures here. The aspiring painter Claude Monet was so fascinated by the unique cliffs and their three rock arches—the Porte d’Amont, the Porte d’Aval and the Manneporte—that he dedicated several paintings to them. Impressed by the ever-changing light and weather conditions, Monet began painting series of motifs in Étretat for the first time, a working method that would later become his trademark.  

In addition to works by Eugène Delacroix, Gustave Courbet, Claude Monet and Henri Matisse, the exhibition brings together a host of other important figures in modern and contemporary art, including Johann Wilhelm Schirmer and Eugène Le Poittevin, as well as Camille Corot, Eugène Boudin and Elger Esser. Together, the works illustrate the enduring fascination that this place continues to exert to this day. Loans come from the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa and the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, among others.  

Philipp Demandt, Director of the Städel Museum, emphasizes: “With our major special exhibition in spring 2026, we are for the first time dedicating ourselves to exploring the emergence of the myth of Étretat. This coastal town, with its striking rock formations and unique light, has been a source of fascination for artists since the 19th century, and continues to captivate to this day. It was in Étretat that Claude Monet developed his famous serial depiction of motifs, which had a decisive influence on Impressionism. We are particularly proud that two outstanding works from the Städel Collection, which were created in Étretat, form the starting point of the exhibition: Monet’s Luncheon and Gustave Courbet’s The Wave. These are complemented by high-calibre international loans, including twenty-four works by Monet alone. We would like to express our sincere thanks to all lenders and our sponsors for their generous support. We look forward to exploring the enduring fascination of Étretat together with our visitors.”  
 
“In the hundred years or so from Romanticism to Classical Modernism, the artistic view of the impressive coastal landscape around the small town of Étretat underwent multifaceted change. The spectrum ranges from atmospheric watercolour and oil studies to early photographs and Claude Monet’s famous paintings of the impressive cliffs. With its distinctive coastal landscape, Étretat was a magnet for artists of several generations. In collaboration with the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon, it was a central concern of ours to place Courbet’s epoch-making wave paintings and Monet’s serial landscape paintings in a broader context and to highlight Étretat’s significance for modern art,” explain Alexander Eiling and Eva Mongi-Vollmer, curators of the exhibition at the Städel Museum.    
 
Curators: Alexander Eiling (Head of Modern Art, Städel Museum), Eva Mongi-Vollmer (Curator, Städel Museum), Stéphane Paccoud (Conservateur en chef, Peintures et sculptures du XIXe siècle, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon) and Isolde Pludermacher (Conservatrice générale peinture, Musée d’Orsay, Paris) in cooperation with Eva-Maria Höllerer (Curator, Städel Museum) and Nelly Janotka (Assistant Curator, Städel Museum)  
 
Sponsored by: Fraport AG, Fontana Foundation, Städelscher Museums-Verein e.V., City of Frankfurt am Main – Department of Culture and Science  
Marketing and Media Partners: Alnatura, Ströer Deutsche Städte Medien GmbH, Elisabethen Quelle, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, arte  
     
You can find the full press release here as a PDF.  

Wall texts: Monet on the Normandy Coast. The Discovery of Étretat

Timeline: Monet on the Normandy Coast. The Discovery of Étretat