In 1965, Coker returned to France after seven years focusing on the East Anglian landscape. Those sites that had previously proved stimulating acted with magnetic force on Coker, pulling him back. Le Manneport, a rock formation in Étretat – Coker’s
very first love – was an image that enthralled Coker, as it had previously Claude Monet. Coker produced numerous depictions of Le Manneport in oil, drypoint etching and watercolour as with this iteration.

Le Manneport, Étretat is a watercolour from one of Coker’s sketchbooks, extending across a double-page spread and laid onto card. Coker employed sketchbooks whilst working in situ throughout his career but with particular prevalence from the 1970s
onwards. These sketchbooks were designed by the artist to include his preferred paper and to be unbound to produce individual works like Le Manneport, Étretat, which would most likely have been painted whilst Coker was surveying the coastal scene. An anecdote from Coker’s first trip to Étretat in 1955 illustrated the perils of seeking out vantage points that provided stimulating proximity: “On the first full day, he set out to draw under the cliffs, with paper clipped to a piece of hardboard. But, eager to
confront the elements directly, he failed to notice the sign that warned against falling rock. A little later, he was surprised when the elements confronted him, a piece of rock only just missing him and splitting both drawing and board.”

Looking down at Le Manneport from a height, the arch of rock is entirely surrounded by the sparkling azure sea, and sky and water are indistinguishable – a bleeding across a near unintelligible horizon line that is often to be seen in de Staël’s seascapes. A certain distortion of perspective is in evidence in Le Manneport, Étretat, a sensation engendered by the high viewpoint that Coker unashamedly augments: “One of the most important things about de Staël was the flattening of space. Consequently you
could paint the feeling, the experience of the place”. In stark contrast to his works of the 1950s, Le Manneport, Étretat is potently evocative of a gloriously sunny summer’s day. The dappled effects of light and shadow, and their reflection off the water, play across the white cliff face. The brilliant palette of gleaming white and jewel-like blue belies an entirely new, and somewhat unexpected, development in Coker’s career – the inauguration of the Mediterranean into the roll-call of preferred locations.