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Notes

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Gustave Courbet had two intense periods of painting seascapes on the northern coast of France. He was at Trouville in 1865 and Etretat in 1869 but these 'sea landscapes', as he called them, were painted largely in the studio. They are unusual amongst his work for there is neither a specific location nor a particular point of interest in the compositions. He may have been inspired by Eugène Louis Boudin, whom he had met in 1859 and nicknamed the 'King of the sky'. In contrast to the Impressionists, who were to use a white canvas, Courbet worked in the traditional manner upon a dark ground which here intensifies the melancholy mood. He explained: 'nature, without the sun, is also dark and black. I do as the light does, I illuminate the parts that project, and the picture is done'.