Étretat's chalk cliffs — the Porte d'Aval arch and the L'Aiguille needle — rise as pale limestone walls threaded with dark flint bands above the Normandy shore. Monet painted them across some fifty canvases, almost purely as colour and luminosity, veiling the stone in the cool blue-gray haze of Channel light.
This system takes that marine mist as its ground: a cyan-gray page, not cream, with chalk-white kept as a highlight that glows against the veil. Serifs from the French 19th century carry the editorial voice; everything else stays soft, atmospheric, and low-contrast.