The Sea

Courbet had first painted the sea at Etretat, on the Normandy coast, in the summer of 1869, the cliffs and the changing light and the weight of a wave about to fall. But by 1872, when this one is dated, his life had turned. He had thrown himself into the Paris Commune the year before, was blamed for the toppling of the Vendome Column, and spent months in prison, and on his release he faced a ruinous bill for putting the column back up. He was often far from any coast now, painting the sea from memory. This is an empty horizon, a low sky, a band of grey-green water, with not a single figure or boat, the sea remembered by a man who that year could not easily get to it.