Stormy sea

In 1886 the writer Guy de Maupassant remembered calling on Courbet at Étretat, the Normandy fishing town where the painter spent the summer of 1869. In a big bare room, he wrote, a fat, greasy man was pasting slabs of white paint onto a canvas with a kitchen knife, now and then pressing his face to the window to watch the storm. That canvas, Maupassant added, became The Wave, which is the second title the Musée d'Orsay gives this picture. It went to the Salon in the spring of 1870. Two boats lie hauled up on the dark shore, the sea is deep green broken by white foam laid on with the knife, and heavy cloud fills the upper half. One small sail shows near the horizon. The French state bought the painting in 1878, the year after Courbet died in exile in Switzerland.