The Beach at Saint-Aubin-sur-Mer

In the summer of 1867 Paris was showing itself off to the world. A vast international exhibition filled the city, and Courbet, kept at arm's length by the official art establishment, put up his own pavilion nearby and charged admission to see his pictures. Then he left for the coast. Rather than the fashionable resorts of Trouville and Deauville, he chose plain little Saint-Aubin in Normandy, invited there by a Paris chemist named Fourquet. The figures he painted are a fisherman's children, barefoot and poor, on an ordinary stretch of sand. A red-haired girl stands in front, one hand pressed to her chest. Most of the canvas goes to a broad, overcast sky and the flat grey sea, with a few fishing boats far out. Courbet worked it in thick, opaque paint and thin, wet washes, so the damp sand seems to hold the light.