Monet was the most remarkable of all the Impressionist landscape painters, and perhaps at no point in his career was his work more varied than in the years between 1878 and 1883. During this time he produced some 300 paintings, many of them amongst his finest works. His painting encompassed motifs of village and river, cliff and wave, as well as expressive portraits and rich still-lifes. For much of this period Monet lived at Vetheuil, a village on the river Seine between Paris and the English Channel. In this tranquil setting, Monet painted in all seasons. He tackled orchards in spring, expansive fields of corn, and the bare trees of the winter months. Among his most memorable paintings are those he made of the ice-floes on the Seine during the great thaw of 1880. On the Normandy coast he painted views straight out to sea, as well as vistas of the beach and the sublime presence of the great cliffs. "Monet: the Seine and the Sea" shows Monet the innovator, the daring Impressionist challenging his brush to record the shifting moods of nature, as well as Monet the competitor, taking on the example of previous painters and reshaping their motifs in his vigorously personal painting.