Belle-Ile-en-Mer,
literally "beautiful-island-in-the-sea", is directly and emphatically
subject to the moods and vagaries of nature. Occasionally calm and wrapped
in the warm embrace of a summer evening, the demenaour of the island
is more characteristically captured in expressive and energetic brushstokes
describing fleeting clouds and choppy seas...
It was to this island of
rugged natural beauty that Claude Monet, John Peter Russel and Henri
Matisse were drawn in the later decades of the 19th century...
Moored
15 kilometres off Brittany, Belle Ile en mer opens up its harbour, between
the island's sandy beaches and jagged cliffs. During the crossing one
can already see the extent to which the aptly named Belle Ile harmoniously
combines a whole palette of lights, colours and landscapes...
Belle-Ile
rose from the sea, the largest of a handful of islands in the Gulf of
Biscay not far from the Atlantic Ocean. Noted primarily for its seventeenth-century
fortress, and in literature for its fantastical rocky caves where one
of Alexander Dumas' heroes, Porthos, hid in the The Three Musketeers
(1844-45), Belle-Ile promised no ruins or outstanding topographical
features to temp the artist.
I
am
in a superbly wild country, a heap of terrible rocks and an improbable
sea of colours.
Claude Monet
