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Lot Essay
From his first encounter with the sea in 1841 in Le Havre, Courbet was drawn to its violent and unbridled force. "The sea! The sea! Its charms sadden me; in its joy it makes me think of a laughing tiger; in its sadness it reminds me of the tears of a crocodile; in its fury it is a caged roaring monster which cannot swallow me" (Courbet to Victor Hugo, 28 November 1864).
Courbet's first great seascapes, in which he ecstatically salutes the Mediterranean, date from circa 1855, but it was in Etretat from 1869 that he created the impressive series of Vague paintings in which the breaking wave became the central motif. In this depiction of a single wave Courbet may have found inspiration in the Japanese prints that were widely available in Paris in the 60s.
When depicting the roar of the sea the artist almost turned it into a metaphor for personal freedom, a feeling so important for the artist's existence. In a letter to the Minister of Fine Arts, M. Richards, in 1870, Courbet wrote, "When I am dead I want people to say about me: he never did belong to any school, any church, any institution, any regime, unless it was the one of liberty".
Courbet broke away from the academic tradition of working from dark to light that characterised his earlier works and developed a new manner of working in paler, more luminous colours. The present work is a typical example of the "sea landscapes" as Courbet used to call them, taking his tone from a streak of salmon pink just above the horizon, modulating his palette through soft pinks, greys, blues and sandtones which he applied with broad strokes of his palette knife. The white curl of foam around the wave resembles the rendition of the rock and limestone formation in his native Franche-Comte.
A contemporary caricaturist exclaimed: "As God has created the sky and the earth from nothing, so has M. Courbet drawn his seascapes from nothing or almost nothing: with three colours from his palette, three brushstrokes - as he knows how to do it - and there is an infinite sea and sky! Stupendous! Stupendous! Stupendous!" (S. Faunce and L. Nochlin, exh. cat. Courbet Reconsidered, New Haven and London, 1988, p. 158).
Courbet's first great seascapes, in which he ecstatically salutes the Mediterranean, date from circa 1855, but it was in Etretat from 1869 that he created the impressive series of Vague paintings in which the breaking wave became the central motif. In this depiction of a single wave Courbet may have found inspiration in the Japanese prints that were widely available in Paris in the 60s.
When depicting the roar of the sea the artist almost turned it into a metaphor for personal freedom, a feeling so important for the artist's existence. In a letter to the Minister of Fine Arts, M. Richards, in 1870, Courbet wrote, "When I am dead I want people to say about me: he never did belong to any school, any church, any institution, any regime, unless it was the one of liberty".
Courbet broke away from the academic tradition of working from dark to light that characterised his earlier works and developed a new manner of working in paler, more luminous colours. The present work is a typical example of the "sea landscapes" as Courbet used to call them, taking his tone from a streak of salmon pink just above the horizon, modulating his palette through soft pinks, greys, blues and sandtones which he applied with broad strokes of his palette knife. The white curl of foam around the wave resembles the rendition of the rock and limestone formation in his native Franche-Comte.
A contemporary caricaturist exclaimed: "As God has created the sky and the earth from nothing, so has M. Courbet drawn his seascapes from nothing or almost nothing: with three colours from his palette, three brushstrokes - as he knows how to do it - and there is an infinite sea and sky! Stupendous! Stupendous! Stupendous!" (S. Faunce and L. Nochlin, exh. cat. Courbet Reconsidered, New Haven and London, 1988, p. 158).