The Wave (La Vague)
Brooklyn Museum photograph
Object Label
This is one of several paintings focusing on cresting waves that Gustave Courbet made in Normandy. The paintings were radical for their anti-picturesque subject and their technique. Referencing his use of a palette knife to slather paint on the canvas in thick strokes, some critics thought the artist’s waves were too solid—too much like undisguised paint—to represent water. Paul Cézanne, who admired Courbet, noted that he “slapped paint on the way a plasterer slaps on stucco.” Popular caricaturists lampooned Courbet’s method.
Author Guy de Maupassant described witnessing Courbet at work on one of his wave paintings in his Étretat studio in 1869: “In a great room a fat, dirty, greasy man was spreading patches of white paint onto a big bare canvas with a kitchen knife. . . . He went and pressed his face against the windowpane to look at the storm. . . . . On the mantelpiece was a bottle of cider. . . . Every now and then Courbet would drink a mouthful and then go back to his painting.”
Caption
Gustave Courbet French, 1819–1877. The Wave (La Vague), ca. 1869. Oil on canvas, 25 3/4 x 34 15/16 x 3in. (65.4 x 88.7 x 7.6cm) frame: 32 1/4 x 41 x 3 in. (81.9 x 104.1 x 7.6 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Mrs. Horace O. Havemeyer, 41.1256. No known copyright restrictions (Photo: Brooklyn Museum, 41.1256_PS9.jpg)
Gallery
Not on view
Collection
Gallery
Not on view
Collection
Artist
Title
The Wave (La Vague)
Date
ca. 1869
Geography
Place made: France
Medium
Oil on canvas
Classification
Dimensions
25 3/4 x 34 15/16 x 3in. (65.4 x 88.7 x 7.6cm) frame: 32 1/4 x 41 x 3 in. (81.9 x 104.1 x 7.6 cm)
Signatures
Signed lower left: "G. Courbet."
Credit Line
Gift of Mrs. Horace O. Havemeyer
Accession Number
41.1256
Rights
No known copyright restrictions
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Frequent Art Questions
What can we learn about this piece? As a surfer I am always drawn to maritime art
Gustave Courbet was a major French artist of the mid- to later-19th centuries. Here Courbet emphasizes the raw power of the elements -- the breaking waves and the stormy sky. He was not just interested in nature's peaceful, picturesque side, but in its violent and unbridled aspect!In everything he painted -- including human bodies as well as seascapes -- he was fully invested in realism. He didn't believe in idealizing anything for the sake of art, and he only painted things that he could observe directly.He painted this picture in 1869 while staying at Etretat, on the Normandy coast of France, along the English Channel.According to Sarah Faunce and Linda Nochlin, curators of an important retrospective on the artist held at the Brooklyn Museum in 1988: "Water was an element to which Courbet was particularly responsive and, as an avid swimmer, one that he could not only paint but immerse himself in totally. Here, he faces his subject head on, identifying with the force of nature to a remarkable degree, indeed almost making the roar of the sea stand as a metaphor for personal freedom."
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