Gustave Courbet (1819–1877)
1870
Oil paint on canvas
80.5 x 99.5 cm
Acquired by Oskar Reinhart in 1925
Inspired by a trip to Normandy in 1869, Gustave Courbet produced more than 60 paintings celebrating the elemental power of the sea. This composition, stripped to its essentials, is typical: a thundering wave crashing upon rocks under a stormy sky filled with leaden clouds. He executed these paintings primarily with a palette knife, rather than a brush, a method that gives the wave a remarkable weight and solidity.
Paul Cezanne greatly admired Courbet’s Wave paintings and emulated the older artist’s use of the palette knife in his early canvases (one of which is on view in this room).