When Claude Monet painted The Terrace at Ste. Adresse in 1866, he was a young unknown of 25, visiting at the family villa outside Le Havre. There he painted his father sunning on a poppy-laden terrace with pennants flapping overhead and the bustling harbor beyond. To critics today, the painting's brilliant colors seem to mark a historic moment, the "thrusting open of French doors to the whole world of light outside." But the fashion of the 1860s was for brownish landscapes of the Barbizon school; Monet was able to sell his work...
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