Low Tide at Trouville

In the late summer of 1865 the casino at Trouville, the Normandy resort, offered Gustave Courbet what he called a superb apartment on the sea, and he stayed about three months. He painted portraits for the visitors, and he also painted the shore itself, again and again. By his own count he came away with 25 sea landscapes and 25 autumn skies, each, as he put it, more extraordinary and free than the last. This is one of them. The horizon sits low, the sea is a thin grey strip with a few small sails on it, and nearly the whole canvas is given to cloud. The Walker Art Gallery points to the salmon pink along the horizon as the key note of the palette, with softer pinks, blues and greys worked up into the sky and plain sand tones and browns for the beach. Liverpool bought the painting in 1961, with help from the National Art Collections Fund and an appeal to companies across Merseyside.