La Vague

Courbet spent the summer of 1869 in Etretat, a fishing village under the chalk cliffs of the Normandy coast, and painted the sea there over and over, the same stretch of breaking water in different moods. He laid the paint on thick, pushing it around with a palette knife as much as a brush, so that the crest of the wave has real weight and grit to it. He kept the horizon low and the sky stormy, giving a small canvas the feel of a vast, heaving sea. The idea came partly from Japanese prints then arriving in Paris, with their single great curling wave. Painting one motif again and again like this, Courbet was doing something Monet and the Impressionists would take up only a few years later.