The Wave

“Courbet has simply painted a wave; a real wave unfurling onto the shore.” This comment by Émile Zola in 1870 reflects the painter’s desire to grasp, in this view of a wild sea, the reality of nature in all its power and strength.

The motif he depicts differs, in its simplicity, from more picturesque and traditional representations of the sea or the coast. The composition is not enlivened by any human presence or even any details of the shore: it is boldly confined to the solitary, threatening wave. The artist has applied the thick paint vigorously with a brush and, in places, a knife, thereby making the movement and energy of the wave felt. The horizon does not join the top and bottom—the sea and the sky—but instead presents them in opposition to one another. The palette explores a broad range of greens, while the sky is composed of dull tones.

This work is one of a series of waves that Courbet painted in 1869. The artist rented a house in Étretat on the coast of Normandy for the summer, where he embarked on some of these wave compositions. He then reworked them from memory in his Paris studio and added elements from his own world: like the cliffs of his native Doubs, the wave becomes almost mineral and rises like a rocky crest.