In the late summer of 1886, on a windswept clifftop in Belle-Ile-en-Mer, John Peter Russell called out to Monet, "the Prince of the Impressionists", whose canvas on the easel, strangely moored by stones and ropes, bore his unmistakable stamp. The master of Giverny then invited the young Australian artist to paint with him. Side by side, for two weeks they produced the historic Port-Coton and Port-Goulphar "series", which embodied the new challenge of Impressionist painting: the pursuit of the instant through a recurring subject brought to incandescence by light and color. Russell, a wealthy heir from Sydney, now established overlooking Goulphar Bay, invited his Impressionist friends from Paris and around the world to share his passion for painting these "terrible" rocks, this "improbably colorful" sea and his family's happiness for twenty years (1888-1909) in the "Englishman's castle" he had built. Rodin sculpts a bust of his Italian wife, Marianna Mattiocco della Torre, a perfect beauty. The young Matisse, won over by the pure color of his host and mentor, awakens his muted palette (1896-1897). Russell also painted his children, here his three sons absorbed, each in his own way, in observing a large crab. A familiar scene elevated to the noble simplicity of an antique bas-relief. Time passes under the bridge of an arm.

Of sky, sand and water. Russell rightly writes to his compatriot Tom Roberts that he feels part of a powerful revolution in art. Men who are rendering what they see, not what they know, are discarding old conventions...

To set course for the best of Impressionism, which is becoming a worldwide movement.