Scogliere sulla costa: piccola spiaggia, alba (Falaise au bord de la mer, vu Petite Plage, soleil levant)

Courbet spent the autumn of 1865 at Trouville on the Normandy coast, a stretch of shore that had only just become fashionable. The railway had reached it two years before, and Deauville next door had been laid out from nothing in 1860 by the duc de Morny, Napoleon III's half-brother. In season the sand filled with Parisians. Courbet went for the society as much as for the sea, painted portraits of the visitors, and had Whistler there with his Irish model Jo Hiffernan, whom Courbet painted too. He wrote home that women came to his studio in crowds to watch him work. Between the portraits he turned out seascapes very quickly, palette knife, low horizon, most of the canvas handed over to sky and water. This one is about 36 by 60 centimetres, one of dozens he carried back to Paris when the season ended.