The Sea Seen from the Heights of Dieppe

In September 1852 Delacroix spent a week in Dieppe, and on his last day there, the 14th, he went down to look at the sea once more and wrote in his journal that it was magnificently calm, one of the finest he had ever seen. Whether this small picture comes from that stay or from a later visit in 1854 has never been settled, and the Louvre's own catalogue dates it only to the third quarter of the century. It is painted in oil on cardboard, later glued to a wooden panel, and measures about half a metre across. It was still in his studio when he died in 1863 and was sold with its contents the following year. After passing through private collections it was bequeathed to the Louvre by the collector Marcel Beurdeley, and entered the museum in 1979.