El combate del Kearsarge y el Alabama

In June 1864 the American Civil War reached the coast of France. The Confederate raider Alabama had slipped into the port of Cherbourg, and the Union warship Kearsarge was waiting outside. When they finally fought, crowds gathered on the Normandy cliffs to watch, and the Alabama was sunk in about an hour. Manet never saw it. He worked from newspaper reports and had a painting finished and on show in a Paris print shop within a month. That's why the ships sit so far off, high on a heaving green-black sea that takes up most of the canvas. The sinking Alabama is half-hidden in its own gun smoke on the right, a French pilot boat hurries in from the left to pick up survivors. A critic later said the sea here was more frightening than the battle. Manet had almost never painted open water before, and the whole picture is really about that steep, restless wall of it.