The success of the ‘seascapes’ that Gustave Courbet had been painting in Normandy since 1865 led the artist to spend several weeks in Étretat in the late summer of 1869. The growing popularity of the area with the public and art lovers ensured that he could easily sell his work at a time when he was experiencing financial difficulties.
He moved into Eugène Le Poittevin's former studio, located opposite the beach and close to the Aval Cliff, from where he enjoyed a prime vantage point. This creative phase was to be particularly productive. He began by working on a large-format view of the Porte d'Aval, but the weather changed his plans. On 11 and 12 September, a hurricane, the violence of which was reported in the press, hit the Channel coast. In an article published a few years later, the writer Guy de Maupassant, who had come to observe the effects of the storm on the beach at Étretat, recounted his encounter with Courbet, working from the window of his studio: ’’From time to time, he would lean his face against the glass and watch the storm.’’ This is how The Wave was born, and Courbet would paint many variations of it until the end of his life. The success of this painting and its counterpart, The Cliff of  Étretat , After the Storm, at the Paris Salon of 1870, was one of the greatest of the artist's career.

Labels

Gustave Courbet
Ornans, Doubs (France), 1819 – La Tour-de-Peilz (Switzerland), 1877
The Cliff of Étretat, After the Storm
1869-1870
Oil on canvas
Paris, musée d’Orsay
Work recovered at the end of World War II, assigned to the Musée du Louvre in 1950, then entrusted to the care of the Musée d'Orsay in 1986. Incomplete history between 1933 and 1945, based on current research. In case of spoliation, the work will be returned to its rightful owners. MNR 561
This painting is chronologically the first of two Courbet undertook during his stay in Étretat with a view to exhibiting them at the Paris Salon, as his correspondence attests. He approached the cliffs with the expert eye of a geological enthusiast, schooled in his hometown of Ornans in the Franche-Comté region of France. He chose a pared-down setting, devoid of the picturesque. The Porte d'Aval is depicted from a viewpoint that does not reveal the Needle. The silhouette of the capstan discreetly blends in with the beach while a group of laundresses blends in with the pebbles along the shore. In contrast, the composition highlights an arched brick door on the left, which leads to a space cut into the cliff to store fishing tackle, but which here takes on an air of mystery.

Gustave Courbet
Ornans, Doubs (France), 1819 – La Tour-de-Peilz (Switzerland), 1877
Étretat, the Cliff and the Porte d’Aval
Ca. 1869-1870
Oil on canvas
Wuppertal, Von der Heydt-Museum
Gift of Julius and Ida Schmits and of Mr and Mrs J. Friedrich Wolff, 1908

Gustave Courbet
Ornans, Doubs (France), 1819 – La Tour-de-Peilz (Switzerland), 1877
Étretat, the Cliff and the Porte d’Aval
Ca. 1869-1870
Oil on canvas
Berlin, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Nationalgalerie, Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz

Gustave Courbet
Ornans, Doubs (France), 1819 – La Tour-de-Peilz (Switzerland), 1877
Laundresses at Low Tide, Étretat
Ca. 1869?
Oil on canvas
Williamstown, Clark Art Institute
Purchased by Sterling and Francine Clark, 1944

Gustave Courbet
Ornans, Doubs (France), 1819 – La Tour-de-Peilz (Switzerland), 1877
The Calm Sea
1869
Oil on canvas
New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art
H.O. Havemeyer Collection, bequest of Mrs H.O. Havemeyer, 1929

Gustave Courbet
Ornans, Doubs (France), 1819 – La Tour-de-Peilz (Switzerland), 1877
The Wave
Ca. 1869
Oil on canvas
Le Havre, musée d’art moderne André Malraux
Purchased with the support of the French government and the Haute-Normandie Region as part of the Regional Museum Acquisition Fund, 2003

Gustave Courbet
Ornans, Doubs (France), 1819 – La Tour-de-Peilz (Switzerland), 1877
The Wave
1869
Oil on canvas
Frankfurt, Städel Museum
Property of Städelsche Museums-Verein e.V.

Gustave Courbet
Ornans, Doubs (France), 1819 – La Tour-de-Peilz (Switzerland), 1877
The Wave, Stormy Weather
Ca. 1869-1870
Oil on canvas
Private collection

Gustave Courbet
Ornans, Doubs (France), 1819 – La Tour-de-Peilz (Switzerland), 1877
Waves with Three Sailboats
After 1870?
Oil on canvas
Private collection

Gustave Courbet
Ornans, Doubs (France), 1819 – La Tour-de-Peilz (Switzerland), 1877
The Wave
Ca. 1869-1870
Oil on canvas
Lyon, musée des Beaux-Arts
Courbet's series of waves contains no details that would allow us to pinpoint their location. The framing of the composition, as if executed on the spot from the artist's studio during a storm, seems innovative. Early versions, like the one in the Musée du Havre, still show boats on the shore, which vanish in later works. Here, there is no human presence to disturb the wildness of nature. Echoing this wildness, the brushwork is crude, leaving visible the marks of the brush and palette knife. The colours move away from naturalism towards mineral tones, as if the wave were set in stone. Courbet used these techniques to express his fascination as a ‘valley dweller’, as he described himself in his letters, with the power and immensity of the ‘horizonless sea’ he had discovered at the age of 21.

Attributed to Alphonse Davanne
Paris (France), 1824 – Saint-Cloud, Hauts-de-Seine (France), 1912
Eugène Le Poittevin's Villa on Étretat Beach
Ca. 1862
Albumen print from a glass negative
Fécamp, Pascal Servain Collection

Anonymous
Waves at Étretat and the Ferme du Mont, at Étretat
After 1905
Gelatin silver prints from glass negatives, pasted into a photo album
Fécamp, Pascal Servain Collection

Gustave Courbet
Ornans, Doubs (France), 1819 – La Tour-de-Peilz (Switzerland), 1877
The Waterspout
1870
Oil on canvas
New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art
H.O. Havemeyer Collection, gift of Horace Havemeyer, 1929
Two paintings of similar composition, painted after Courbet's stay in Étretat, take as their subject a waterspout, a term used to describe a tornado over an open body of water. The meteorological phenomenon, no doubt seen by Courbet himself, is depicted by columns of water swirling under a threatening sky and over a raging sea. Here, the painter is depicting the power of nature in a topographical setting that is not clearly defined, as the rocks that appear in the painting do not allow Étretat to be accurately identified as the site of the painting.

Gustave Courbet
Ornans, Doubs (France), 1819 – La Tour-de-Peilz (Switzerland), 1877
The Waterspout, Étretat
Ca. 1870
Oil on canvas
Dijon, musée des Beaux-Arts
Donation of Pierre and Kathleen Granville, 1969