The Cliffs at Etretat, Claude Monet, 1885 - TI Great Art Initiative
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Bursting the South Sea Bubble
Finance Lessons from the 18th Century
Due to its deep roots in the finances of the British government and the vast popularity of its shares amongst the British public, the crash of the South Sea Company caused a national debt still being repaid in the 21st century (Castle) and the ruination of the livelihoods of thousands (R.M. Greenwich) of people.
In 1720 Great Britain, the stock of the South Sea Company, which was chartered to trade slaves in South America, (French 109) crashed from a height of £1,000 in June to £120 by December of the same year (Ibid 99) — a near 90% collapse. In a world of globally-interconnected economies, where the peaks and troughs of one financial system inevitably affect the health of the others; where the 2008 and 2020 Covid recessions remain fresh in the public consciousness and where people worry about and augur the coming of the next financial crisis (Shaw), it is clear that determining what causes such ruinous events is a worthwhile pursuit.
The South Sea Bubble presents itself as a valuable case study to this end insofar as it encompasses the perspectives of government, private enterprise, and the public in its portmanteau of culpable parties. This complexity is the perfect environment for examining the topic deeply. Furthermore, the relatively short time span in which it occurred allows the analysis to be done in careful detail in relation to each perspective (Britannica). Finally, the good documentation of the crash, in the form of periodicals, letters, and ledgers, all written in comprehensible English, allows for primary sources to be employed effectively in the effort to understand the events that led to the Bubble, while giving abundant material for other cited researchers to base their work on. With considerations to the suitability of the South Sea Bubble of 1720 in the task of investigating financial crises, the question at hand remains ‘What caused the collapse of the South Sea Company and its wider impacts on British society?’
In answering the question specifically and from it developing a set of axioms by which to understand financial crises generally, breaking the arguments of this paper into individual chapters — as described and shown below — is useful in organising the domains of exploration and therefore producing a more coherent argument.
First, the conditions of Great Britain are established as a method to create a contextual background against which the events discussed can be set, and by the same, be more precisely understood. Second, the rise of the South Sea Company and its chief director, John Blunt, are discussed and analysed, with focus put on actions contributing to the exponential rise of South Sea Company stock. Third, the government and its institutions are analysed, with pursuit given to the trends in government actions that lead to financial crises. Fourth, the collective mentality of the British populace is analysed psycho-economically to determine what led to the conditions in market demand enabling the Bubble. Finally, analyses of each of the above elements are synthesised to understand the South Sea Bubble and in the same light bring forth a collection of axioms and principles from three perspectives that govern financial crises as a whole. The chapters are as follows:
Chapter 1: Conditions of Great Britain
1.1 Socio-Economic Conditions of Great Britain
1.2 Political Landscape of Great Britain
1.3 Institutions of Great Britain
Chapter 2: Rise of the South Sea Company
2.1 The Sharp Mind of John Blunt
2.2 Manipulation of Value and Parliament
Chapter 3: Behaviour of the Public and the Individual
3.1 Rational and Irrational Behavior
Conclusion and Implications
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Works Cited
Chapter 1: Conditions of Great Britain
1.1 Socio-Economic Conditions of Great Britain
The British state was in a financially precarious situation, with millions of pounds in debts and no clear way out. This economic affliction played a key part in ensuring that any method which promised to rehabilitate British finances was a welcome sight. Scotland and England officially became Great Britain with the Acts of Union of 1707 (Alexander et al 12), which heralded a more unified, functional economy for the island as a whole, insofar as the administration of business and the mechanism of trade became centralised in the British Parliament and Crown (Ibid 26). Though unification provided some economic benefits to Great Britain (Ibid 12), the wars that it was involved with in the early 18th century, specifically Queen Anne’s War (Britannica) and the War of the Spanish Succession, drained British coffers (Hattendorf 198). The resulting climate of constant war, and the loss of trading prospects, especially the loss of access to many New World ports due to conflicts with Spain and France, sunk Britain into debts (Carlos et al 2). Some £9,000,000 were owed to a myriad of creditors by 1711, with much of the debt in short-term liabilities (French 88). Britain was in treacherous financial straits, and a need to navigate out of them was apparent. Considering the kind of external pressures and competition between itself and other European powers, it was clear that, to successfully keep the state afloat, internal methods of alleviation would have to be levied.
Amongst the most promising strides in Elizabethan England (later Britain) was the joint-stock company. As a method of generating funds for both investors and the taxmen, it had the potential to deliver the kind of economic productivity Britain needed. In essence, the concept of a joint-stock company is simple — shareholders would pool their money to invest in one enterprise, therefore raising more capital than they could on their own, sharing the risks of the business venture (which were severe in transatlantic trade), and sharing profits in proportion to the number of shares owned (Abdullah 34). Many renowned, contemporary public and indeed private companies operate under a similar structure, yet the concept was relatively novel in the 17th century, with the Virginia Company and the Dutch East India Company (the VOC) leading the vanguard of the joint-stock revolution (Robertson and Funnell 349).
Before joint-stock companies, most large businesses, if one could call them that, were private — owned either by nobles, royals, or powerful trading, planting, or banking families, often with monopoly protections granted by the state (Roover 26). Against the background of the stratified system of inherited wealth in mediaeval society and a similarly rigid, though far more mercantile, economic structure in the Renaissance, the watershed significance of joint-stock companies was the expansion of the access to enterprise. Where matters of international commerce used to be the domain of the gentries and lone merchants of Europe, it was now available to a wider range of the public. The rising professional classes, who, despite having little knowledge or connection with large trading ventures, were able to invest in such companies (Walker 99). The democratisation of corporate participation was further compounded by fractional shares and shares sold on loan.
In the same vein, this expansion of access to commerce carried with it an expansion of the impact-area of financial failure. Businesses folding would no longer be determined by and affect only private, small groups with money to cushion the blow or individual merchants, it would now be the potential folly of all with money and will enough to buy a share. Thence, the use of a joint-stock company in Britain as the vehicle of economic advancement would itself be followed with financial danger to its investors — the British public. Inasmuch as the joint-stock model allows for greater a potential for wealth and commerce, it also clears the way for public participation in one of the world’s first stock markets, and as such, it transforms the impact of financial failure from a cloistered manifestation to a far reaching one, thereby reflecting the conditions of contemporary, global economies.
1.2 Political Landscape of Great Britain
The severe political fissures in the British parliament further contributed to the kind of climate necessary for a financial crisis to develop. Parliament was split between the Tories and the Whigs (Britannica), and though Britain was a monarchy, the divine right of monarchical rule would be balanced by the parliament, which had been accruing power and rights since the signing of the Magna Carta in 1215 (Langton 1). Divisions to which people are overly-devoted promote polarisation. Jilani and Smith (Jilani & Smith) explain that “[t]he force that empowers polarization is tribalism: clustering ourselves into groups that compete against each other in a zero-sum game where negotiation and compromise are perceived as betrayal.” Following the Glorious Revolution of 1688, the Tories — monarchists — and the Whigs — sceptics of absolute monarchical power — were entrenched in their differences (Bogart 271). The ideological tribalism which drove said entrenchment was detrimental to the ability of the British political system to act with decisiveness and credibility, as competition in the zero-sum game of tribal politics overshadowed pragmatic policy. Dr. David Stasavage (124) gives credence to this analysis, stating “that [economic] credibility…was not consolidated until a Whig coalition, which included government creditors, established durable control over Parliament.” That is to say, political stability breeds economic stability. For all their divisions, Republicans and Democrats of contemporary America always bicker about the raising of the debt ceilings, whilst never failing to actually raise it, because they all know the importance of American credit on the world stage eclipses the squabbles of politics.
Yet, exactly this kind of unity in financial policy was missing in 1710-1711, when Robert Harley, Tory Chancellor of the Exchequer (responsible for the government’s budget), lacked the political dominance needed to command the government’s finances effectively, via taxation, for instance. Therefore, the key pathway — taxes — to raise money closed, Harley needed to produce a solution to the government’s financial problems that circumvented the political gridlock.
1.3 Institutions of Great Britain
This political climate not only crippled the parliament’s ability to act, but it also afflicted British government institutions. The Bank of England (BoE) was a monolithic innovation in the financing of governments, and it is the model on which most modern central banks are based. It was amongst the first of its kind — a central bank dedicated to the continued function of the government, giving loans, favourable rates, and other services in the pursuit of a solvent, credible state (Broz & Grossman 53). It was obvious to Harley, as it would be to anyone, that the BoE would be the most important institution at play in the effort to keep British finances in stable order (Murray & Sinnreich 122). The catch, however, was partisanship. The BoE had been built and was controlled by Whigs, and therefore, when Harley needed funds to keep the Tory government running, “the Whig leaning directors of the Bank of England refused to loan additional funds to the new Tory ministry — no surprise, given that Tories had attacked the Whigs for more than two decades for redistributing wealth via the land tax from the landed gentry to the London merchant/financier class represented by the Bank.” (Ibid 122). It is this institutional issue — the inability of a divided and embattled government to function, even in matters of supreme importance — that directly created the need for an external entity to do the work of the BoE. The first seed from which the conditions for the South Sea Bubble sprouted was partisan gridlock. The axiom governing financial crises that is logically derived therefrom is as such: voids of effective services breed the desire for them to be filled. Moreover, when a basic service, such as financing the government, is not provided, less discrimination and criticism is given to whom or whatever can fill that void.
Chapter 2: Rise of the South Sea Company
2.1 The Sharp Mind of John Blunt
The Sword Blade Company (SBC), as the name suggests, was a producer of rapiers (a thin, sharp type of sword) until 1700, when its unprofitable business led to it being overtaken by John Blunt (Chown 139). Blunt was an entrepreneur who, with a syndicate composed of George Caswell, Elias Turner, and Jacob Sawbridge, sought to use the SBC as a banking institution — targeting the debt ridden government specifically. Carswell explains that the goal of the company was “[annexing] for themselves as large a part as they could of the politico-financial empire that had been carved out by the Bank of England.” (Guttridge 34). In this quote, a great deal is reinforced and further revealed. In regard to reinforcement, it is clear that the politicisation of the BoE was obvious to careful observers — it was a Whig-operated institution uninterested in working across party lines, and as a result of that, a market could be found in the Tory Chancellor of the Exchequer — in need of functional banking services to run the government and finance dept payments. It is apparent that the SBC under Blunt understood that voids of service created demand for them to be filled. In regard to revelation, the above statement on the intentions of the SBC makes clear another axiom that governs financial crises — the necessity of the existence of actors with sufficient agency.
The SBC identified a potential customer, and would go on to seize upon that observation. For this to be possible, an economic system where entities can accrue sufficient agency to deliver impactful changes in the economy must exist, and 18th century Britain is reflective of that. The model of the joint-stock company and the redistribution of wealth from the landed gentry to the growing class of financiers, merchants, and professionals created the kind of quasi capitalist environment where enough agency could be gathered by more than just aristocrats. This shows a shift in history insofar as a) the development of the British economy gave rise to a greater pool of relatively wealthy people, whose status was determined by work more so than land b) there is sufficient money in the hands of the public to invest into companies, allowing said companies to accrue agency and power and c) private enterprises would be keen to embroil themselves in matters of state — all trends that have continued to expand into modernity.
The SBC attempted its incursion into the BoE’s dominion by simply offering the government loans, but the Bank retaliated by having the SBC banned from operating as a banking entity (Chown 139). The SBC, however, was able to circumvent such impositions through an alternative method: It offered Chancellor of the Exchequer, Harley, a way out of the continual struggle of financing the government — the South Sea Company (SSC). The way the SSC would solve Harley’s problem would be to give the government’s creditors the opportunity to exchange the government’s debt for shares in the SSC, and the SCC would reorganise the government debt from short term to long term. If the creditors agreed, the government would benefit, as Chown explains, because “[an] accumulation of short term liabilities, totaling £9 million, would be replaced by a single long term obligation totaling £576,532 per annum: 6 percent plus management charges. This removed the day-to-day problem of treasury management and restored the government’s creditworthiness.” (139). In essence, the SSC would be the Tory government’s bank, providing it with a much more favourable, long term debt structure and providing its creditors with the opportunity to transmute debt — an asset with finite profits, if ever repaid — to shares in a corporation — an asset with a theoretically infinite growth potential. Harley, lacking an alternative route to the basic banking services the government needed, agreed, and further, the SSC was granted a monopoly to trade in the South Seas and South America. This monopoly charter was created by the government to ensure creditors that the company would be able to make further income as an entrepreneurial venture, rather than simply a government bank (Ibid 140), and therefore entice them to purchase the apparently invaluable SSC shares. Moreover, the fact that creditors would be able to purchase shares at the beginning of the SSC’s lifecycle acted as a further incentive, much like a modern IPO. These elements of the SCC’s entry onto the British stage demonstrate quite clearly the axiom of marketability — proposals must seem exciting and highly likely to succeed, and when the appearance of value is greater than the reality of it, the space is created for a bubble to be formed. Blunt saw the necessity for marketing and knew how to realise its potential through the 18th century form of mass-media — coffee house prints, such as the Flying Post, in which the success of the SSC would be advertised, and excitement surrounding its future catalysed in the minds of people blinded by the sight of a richer tomorrow (Tookey 1).
2.2 Manipulation of Value and Parliament
The divergence between appearances and reality is the key axiom in the conditions necessary for financial crises to occur. This is an inevitable element of economies — humans perceive value and agree upon it. In good situations, this perception is reflective of the real-world capacity of the subject of the valuation to produce or retain value. In bad situations, that real-world capacity for value is overshadowed by unrealistic perceptions. Herein lies the importance of the SSC as a case study in the broader historical analysis of financial crises: the SSC was not a functional enterprise.
Chown discusses that the reason creditors would take the SSC up on its offer is because they would expect its trading operations in the South Seas to provide profits beyond merely holding the government’s debt (140). Yet this expectation had little basis in reality. Although the monopoly charter granted to the SSC gave the assurance that trade would be bountiful and the profits high, it was effectively an empty document. Spain, a country at war with Britain, controlled nearly all the ports in South America, and would naturally not be inclined to allow its opponent to carry out trade within its territory without opposition, as such, there would be little trade for the SSC in its titular seas.
To mask reality, Blunt employed himself as chief marketer and acquisitor of favour. Foremost, the monopoly itself was a marketing stratagem — the SSC would seem to be poised to extract riches from the New World, and would be presented as doing so. Moreover, parliament members and influential individuals would be persuaded and bribed into both supporting the SSC politically and be given the access to SSC shares before anyone else — again, capturing the fervent, human desire to grow rich. This would create an intertwining thread between the SSC and the government, more so than the BoE had ever had — Members of Parliament (MPs) would want the SSC to succeed out of personal interest as shareholders. The effectiveness of bribery as a method of winning favour is shown in that, despite academic analyses submitted to parliament by John Trenchard of the University of London favouring the Bank as Britain’s primary financial institute (Trenchard 6), Tory Westminster deferred to the SCC, partly because of the tribalism present in government institutions and partly because of SCC persuasion. The irrationality foreshadowed by this only grew. As Douglas French points out, these bribes in the form of stock “sparked the fire of speculation in the Company’s shares.” (French 96). The shift from merely proposing a favourable deal to the government to outright criminality should be noted — corruption and lack of transparency in the halls of power allow for private enterprises to tie their success with the interests of lawmakers. Moreover, French’s mention of speculation bolsters the axiom that the divergence between perception and reality is amongst the fundamental causes of financial crises; where reality and perception bifurcate, collapse becomes inevitable.
The principle that marketing, when manifesting as aggrandisement or hype, is a factor in financial crises is clear, yet it is worthwhile to explore how this deviation from reality occurs. First, credence is given to the viability of a venture — trading in the South Seas with a monopoly and the success of other joint-stock companies, such as the British East India Company (Chaudhuri 3), gave the SSC the appearance of profitability in addition to its role as the government’s new quasi bank. Second, protection from detailed inspections and inquiries via bribes to MPs is critical in upholding this veneer of profitability. Third, trust is acquired by way of endorsement — if the MPs are buying stock in the SSC, the government uses it as its financial manager, and the cleverest mind of the day, Sir Isaac Newton, invests in it (as he did, losing most of his wealth in the process), (Odlyzko 1) then further potential for profit and trust are readily given to the SCC. Finally, Blunt ensured that the SSC would have a wide market by offering extremely favourable subscription plans, wherein one would need to only pay 10% of the actual price of the share, and pay the rest of it in rates, therefore ensuring a low bar for investment (Dale).
The description of the above factors leads to the identification of another axiom — artificial demand. By fabricating the profitability of the SSC to a high degree, ensuring its appearance as trustworthy by association, and opening it up to mass investment, Blunt managed to create the conditions where the demand for SSC shares was not anywhere close to reflective of SSC’s actual value, as best illustrated by the fact that the height of SCC value, each and every individual share value was worth £1,000 — roughly, the equivalent in to £225,860.34 per share in 2020 (Webster). In turn, so soon as investors realised the lack of actual value in the South Sea Company, the bubble would burst. Realisation of incongruence between reality and perceived value, most often by loss of trust, therefore, is another factor in financial crises.
Chapter 3: Behaviour of the Public and the Individual
3.1 Rational and Irrational Behavior
In speaking about issues like trust and marketing, the human element must be dissected as well, so as to apprehend how the techniques employed by Blunt work and why they cause the behaviour of speculatory mass investment and short term thinking; whether in the minds of 18th or 21st century humans. Key in said dissection is the work of Dale, Johnson, and Tang, who, in their paper “Financial markets can go mad: evidence of irrational behaviour during the South Sea Bubble” analysed the behaviour of the public through a psycho-economic lens, based on primary source data from Freke’s Prices of Stocks (Freke) to determine whether the Bubble was caused by rational or irrational decision making. Flatly, they conclude that in 1720 “investor behaviour [became] manic and irrational” (Dale et al 264). Yet what elevates their work above the analyses of individuals like Adam Anderson (Hoppit 163) — who wrote amongst the first accounts of the Bubble — is their dedication to nuance and the statistical measurement of the separation between real-world value and perceived value. They acknowledge that misjudging value is in and of itself not necessarily irrational behaviour, as reflected by overestimations of value in times of technological expansion or miscalculations in the minds of investors — the fact that value is itself a function of human thought is recognized, with focus given to uncritical, hasty action as a hallmark of irrationality (Dale et al 237). Moreover, their conclusion of irrational behaviour is explained through the spread of demand for SSC stock to a public market with little knowledge of the actual characteristics of the company, its ability to make profit, or its performance, as reinforced by Kindleberger’s “Manias, Panics, and Crashes: A History of Financial Crises”, wherein he cites the South Sea Bubble as a prime example of irrational investor behaviour due to widespread ignorance (Kindleberger 59).
From this analysis, it is clear that a kind of switch occurs, wherein the mind of the sovereign individual becomes the mind of the collective. Why purchase SSC stock? Because everyone is purchasing it. Why is SCC stock so valuable? Because everyone is investing in it. Why should I buy SCC stock now? Because if I do not, everyone else will profit, and I will be left behind. The electric rise of the share price, month-to-month, created a situation of urgency (known often as FOMO, fear of missing out) where investors raced to buy shares, leaving little room for rational consideration, and hence surging the price higher. Therefore, it is logical to assert that financial crises require the simultaneous participation from the perspective of the collective mind of the public — herd behaviour — and that access to information and understanding of assets must be limited, intentionally muddled, or uncared for. Likewise, if trust in the enterprise begins to break down, it spreads in a domino effect also.
Indeed, on June 11th, 1720, royal assent was given to the Bubble Act, which sought to constrict the capital flow to companies other than the SSC (French 100). In an ironic twist, the government betrayed its reliance on the artificial growth of the SSC by threatening the freedom of joint-stock companies to issue shares and receive investment; trust in the SCC faltered, and the South Sea Company’s stock collapsed in the space of months. By December, from the height of £1,000 in June, the stock price had dropped to £120 (Ibid 99) — reinforcing the herd nature of trust: if trust is strong, it will spread, if it wavers, it will spread also. Its importance to value in either direction is paramount, yet still, only forms one of the many causes of the bubble.
Conclusion and Implications
In answering the question ‘What caused the collapse of the South Sea Company and its wider impacts on British society?’, the analysis of actions from the perspectives of the government, its institutions, the private enterprises of John Blunt, and the public in its manifestation of herd behaviour, yield a set of axioms by which the conditions for financial crises are created. First, a sufficiently wide breadth of access to economic participation. Second, vacancies of services and dysfunctional institutions open the way for any entity that is able to fill the void to be successful, with less discernment given due to necessity. Third, entities with sufficient agency to make noticeable impacts on the economy must have the ability to be formed and to exercise said agency. Fourth, entities and proposals must be marketable, but not necessarily functional. Fifth, there must be a continued divergence between reality and the perception of the value of a given entity, creating the space for a bubble, and sixth; a widespread realisation of that divergence breaks the trust, puncturing the bubble, and destroying value. These are the principles which governed the South Sea Bubble, and will continue to govern similar financial crises in the future. To avoid becoming a victim of a bubble of the future, it is useful to ask oneself ‘What actual value does my investment hold or generate?’ — if that question is hard to answer without platitudes, it might be wise to learn from the mistake of the discoverer of gravity and keep one’s money in one’s pocket.
With the identification of the axioms which govern financial crises completed, further thought ought to be given to the implications of this knowledge in the context of modernity. One does not need to be a careful student of the news to know that, in the 21st century, financial scams and schemes of all transmutations readily impose themselves upon the public, whether through online advertising, celebrity endorsements, or verbose pundits who extol their virtues in even the most serious publications. Indeed, in the days of the South Sea Bubble, when the SSC was attacked by John Trenchard, an English writer and advocate of limited governance, in a series of pamphlets questioning the company’s soundness, newspapers like The Director and The Moderator came to its defence, keen to protect the reputation of a stock they likely held (Harvard Library). History repeats itself today when defenders of nonsensical and useless cryptocurrencies, vaporware products, or “tech” companies with no technology to speak of demand that three-dimensional simulations, concepts scribbled on whiteboards, and evidence-poor theories ought to be enough to warrant the investment of one’s savings.
From this reading of both history and modernity, a key word is distilled as an encapsulation of the folly of such investments as the above, speculation. One might define speculation as a sort of gambling, where the speculator picks a stock or a token or a new real estate development, betting on the likelihood of not only some returns, but great returns — great enough to make them wealthy, perhaps fantastically so. A critic may argue that blue chip stocks, government bonds, and tested real estate investments — apartments in London, for instance — are also gambling, and they would be right to do so. However, the difference between what is seen as traditional investment and what is seen as speculation is the degree of profitability. In buying a share in Apple, an investor does not expect a windfall return, but rather a steady, yearly growth and dividends supplied by a large, stable, well-governed and regulated corporation. Conversely, in buying a cryptocurrency token, a speculator expects or at least hopes for a financial windfall. To be convinced of this, one need only look at the kind of aggrandizing, hype language that is used in conversations regarding speculative assets: “to the moon”, “moonshot”, “HODL” — a popularised misspelling of “hold” which refers to holding cryptocurrency assets in spite of massive volatility and reveals the level of maturity of the speculator class) — are all used to encourage the idea that speculative assets have the likely chance to grow significantly and thus make the speculator rich. Likewise, those with reservations or concerns are pilloried with acronyms like “FUD”, which stands for “fear, uncertainty, doubt”, and shamed for their lack of confidence on the grounds of cowardice. This language, along with the clear distinction of expectations between traditional investors and speculators, demonstrates clearly a hallmark of a financial crisis in the making..
On the matter of language, one must also pay mind to complexity as a tool for convincing a person to become a speculator — even an unwitting one. Cryptocurrencies, and the blockchain technology which underpins them, are certainly complicated, and deeply steeped in mathematics and computer science. Likewise, the South Sea Company had a complex business model, with a charter of British monopoly of the slave trade in the New World on one hand, and government banking and share-loans on the other. Few people at the time attempted to understand the business model on which the SCC was founded and the possibility of its success as a venture. Few people now understand how blockchains work, and fewer still give any thought to the inherent flaw of an argument which supposes that technological novelty equates to widespread use and capitalization, as many modern companies claim. Complexity is used as a club to beat down people with questions as stupid, ignorant, and inferior, therefore making those who look past such reservations feel smart, knowledgeable, and superior. In truth, an unwillingness to answer questions or cooperate with investigations reveals the empiric weakness and rotting foundations of the obstinate party’s argument, business, or institution. One is reminded of the Confucian proverb “The man who asks a question is a fool for a minute, the man who does not ask is a fool for life.” All in all, this paper invites you to have the bravery to be a fool for a minute, and in so doing, avert disasters that indelibly affect your life.
Great Art Initiative Entry
The Cliffs at Etretat, painted by Claude Monet around 1885, show the Porte D’Aval arch and the accompanying, sharp, lonely rock, emerging from the shallow water. The colours of the painting — a shortlist of blues, greens, whites, and beiges — evoke a placid, delicate atmosphere, buttressed by the peaceful voyages of the little boats in the bay; one might feel warmly invited to go for a swim. The finesse of the brushstrokes of the gentle sky make it feel as though it might have been sewn by a god using the softest threads. In somewhat clandestine contrast to the supple comfort of it all stand the sharp, sheer cliffs and rocks framing the Porte D’Aval. They pointedly suggest that, were one to get too enwrapped by the pleasantness of their environment, too focused on its welcoming character; the smallest trip, the shortest lapse of attention, could result in an unpleasant fate. The Cliffs at Etretat remind us of an unfortunate element of reality: that even in the most tranquil places, a single misstep might precede a fall. Despite this being a rather unorthodox reading of Monet’s work, it is nonetheless a testament to the most wondrous property of art; that its meaning is made in equal parts by the artist and the observer, and hence, the lessons it can teach us are boundless in their number and their influence.
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