NARRATOR:
Gustave Courbet was probably the most prominent artist in mid-19th century France, a leader of the revolt against the French Academy and an uncompromising proponent of realism in painting. This vast and poetic seascape, created in the seaside resort of Trouville in Normandy, illustrates his dramatic departure from established canons of painting. A critic observed:
THORÉ [ACTOR]:
“The sea fascinates him. Each morning, the effects of the great water and great sky always changing, he makes a study of what he sees at the beach, sea landscapes, as he calls them. He has brought back forty of them, extraordinary in impression and of the rarest quality.”
NARRATOR:
Courbet painted exactly what he saw: bands of dark earth and sand, thick with seaweed and puddles of receding ocean water a pale green sea lapping the shore, its ripples reflecting the early morning light. A subtle orange glow announces the rising sun, as pink and blue clouds chase each other across the sky. A brilliant observer of chromatic variations in nature, Courbet creates a scene verging on the abstract.
Marine
c. 1865 -1866
Gustave Courbet (French, 1819-1877)
On View
Gustave Courbet traveled to Trouville, on the Normandy coast, in the fall of 1865. There he painted twenty-five pictures of the autumn sea and sky, “each,” he wrote to his father, “more free and extraordinary than the last.” The artist was not one for false modesty or for falseness of any kind. Frank pictures, frankly painted, his landscapes refuse to deceive us about their own making. At once luminous and opaque, canvases like this one are so thick with pigment that some critics accused Courbet of laying on his paint with a trowel.
Details
- Artist Name: Gustave Courbet (French, 1819-1877)
- Title: Marine
- Date: c. 1865 -1866
- Medium: Oil on canvas
- Dimensions: 19-3/4 x 24 in. (50.2 x 61cm)
- Credit Line: The Norton Simon Foundation
- Accession Number: F.1970.12.P
- Copyright: © The Norton Simon Foundation
Object Information
Jean-Baptiste Faure (1830-1914), Paris.
[Durand-Ruel, Paris].
F. Lindet; by 1902, (Lindet sale, Paris, Hôtel Drouot, 6 May 1953, lot 8, ill.)
[Galerie Jacques Dubourg, Paris; sold December 1953 to];
[Roland, Browse & Delbanco, London; sold 29 March 1954 to];
R. C. Pritchard (sale, Geneva, Christie’s, 6 November 1969, lot 170, ill.).
[E.V. Thaw and Co., New York; sold 1970 to];
The Norton Simon Foundation.
[Durand-Ruel, Paris].
F. Lindet; by 1902, (Lindet sale, Paris, Hôtel Drouot, 6 May 1953, lot 8, ill.)
[Galerie Jacques Dubourg, Paris; sold December 1953 to];
[Roland, Browse & Delbanco, London; sold 29 March 1954 to];
R. C. Pritchard (sale, Geneva, Christie’s, 6 November 1969, lot 170, ill.).
[E.V. Thaw and Co., New York; sold 1970 to];
The Norton Simon Foundation.
Exposition des oeuvres de M. G. Courbet
- Paris, Rond-point du Pont de l'Alma, 1867 to
From a Private Collection: A special Exhibition for Museums Week
- City Art Gallery, Bristol, 1968 to
[on loan]
- Richmond, Virginia, Museum of Fine Arts, 1970-06-19 to 1973-03-05
Courbet and the Modern Landscape
- J. Paul Getty Museum, 2006-02-21 to 2006-05-14
The Lure of the Water: Impressionists at the Seashore
- Norton Simon Museum, 1993-07-01 to 1993-10-10
Three Centuries of French Art: Selections from The Norton Simon, Inc. Museum of Art and The Norton Simon Foundation_1
- California Palace of the Legion of Honor, 1973-05-03 to 1976-06-15
Reinstallation of South Wing
- Norton Simon Museum, 1993-10-07 to 1995-08-13
- Fernier, Robert, La vie et l'oeuvre de Gustave Courbet: Catalogue raisonné, Peintures 1819-1865, 1977, no. 499
- Morse, John D., Old Master Paintings in North America, 1979, p. 69
- Margulis, L., Early Life, 1982, cover
- Masterpieces from the Norton Simon Museum, 1989, p. 119
- Levine, Steven Z., Monet, Narcissus, and Self-Reflection: The Modernist Myth of the Self, 1994, fig. 11 p. 8
- Eisenman, Stephen, Monet: Atti dei convegno (Symposium essays: 'Monet. I luoghi della pittura'), 2002, p. 140
- Eyerman, Charlotte; Dominique de Font-Réaulx and Mary Morton, Courbet and the Modern Landscape, 2006, plate 36 p. 112
- Brettell, Richard R. and Stephen F. Eisenman, Nineteenth-Century Art in the Norton Simon Museum, volume 1, 2006,
- Campbell, Sara, Collector Without Walls: Norton Simon and His Hunt for the Best, 2010, cat. 737 p. 333
- Christie's New York, European Art Part I, October 2019, 2019, fig. 1 p. [61]
Additional Artwork by Artist
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