Autumn Sea

By 1867 Courbet was the most argued-about painter in France, known for huge canvases of stone-breakers and village funerals that critics found deliberately coarse. That same year, while Paris filled with the crowds of a world's fair, he was over on the Normandy coast painting the sea with almost nothing in it. No shipwreck, no drama on deck. Just the heavy swell of an autumn sea under a low sky, with two small sailing boats set far out on the horizon. He built these marines up with a palette knife, dragging thick paint the way the water itself piles up and drops. Younger painters were watching him do it. Within a few years Monet would be working the same coast, chasing the same weather.