Beach in Normandy

c. 1872/1875

Gustave Courbet

Artist, French, 1819 - 1877

Towering, sheer cliffs loom to our left, over a sunny beach scattered with boats in this horizontal landscape painting. The chalky, rugged faces of the cliffs are dappled and streaked with olive green, dark brown, gray, rust red, and mustard yellow. The horizon comes a third of the way up the composition so the cliffs are outlined against the powder-blue sky, which is loosely veiled with wispy, cream-white clouds. The mossy tops of the cliffs are illuminated by sunlight from the upper left, and a solitary leafy tree leans into view between the two cliff-tops closest to us. Four empty, wooden boats sit on the flat, sandy beach below. We look onto the long sides of the two closest to us. One is stripped and appears dilapidated, while the one behind it has a ginger-brown sail attached to the mast in the prow. Two more wooden poles or oars jut out from the cockpit on either side of the mast. A small flag with horizontal bands of blue, white, and red flies from a short pole near the middle of the boat. A bundle the same color as the unfurled sail sits in the boat. Another sail is spread out on the sand to our right, and coiled ropes lie nearby. The two other boats are slightly further back on the right, with one angled to our left while we view the other straight on. There are two people a short distance beyond these boats. One faces our left in profile while the other sits on the sand looking toward the water. Thin trails of white delineate the low surf and a few sailboats drift by on the brilliant blue water. The artist signed the lower left, “G. Courbet.”

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Artwork overview

  • Medium

    oil on canvas

  • Credit Line

    Chester Dale Collection

  • Dimensions

    overall: 61.3 x 90.2 cm (24 1/8 x 35 1/2 in.)
    framed: 87.9 x 116.2 cm (34 5/8 x 45 3/4 in.)

  • Accession

    1963.10.10

Artwork history & notes

Provenance

(M. F.... sale, Hôtel Drouot, Paris, 27 May 1891, no. 18, as Marine). Delafond [Delafons], Paris.[1] (Galerie Jacques Dubourg, Paris); sold 18 July 1952 to Chester Dale [1883-1962], New York; bequest 1963 to NGA.
[1] According to Robert Fernier, La vie et l'oeuvre de Gustave Courbet, catalogue raisonné, Lausanne and Paris, 1978: II:98, no. 725, the name is Delafond. However, Jacques Dubourg, in correspondence with Chester Dale dated 22 September 1952, calls the family Delafons, which is carried over in the Chester Dale records in NGA curatorial files. When queried many years later (see letter dated 5 October 1967 in NGA curatorial files), Jacques Dubourg was unable to determine from his files whether the name ended in an "s" or a "d".

Associated Names

Exhibition History

1965

  • The Chester Dale Bequest, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1965, unnumbered checklist.

Bibliography

1963

  • MacNeil, Neil. "Chester Dale: Collector." McCalls (November 1963): 124, repro.

1965

  • Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Paintings & Sculpture of the French School in the Chester Dale Collection. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1965: 52, repro., as Beach at Etretat.

  • Summary Catalogue of European Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1965: 33, as Beach at Etretat.

1966

  • Cairns, Huntington, and John Walker, eds. A Pageant of Painting from the National Gallery of Art. 2 vols. New York, 1966: 2:420, color repro., as Beach at Étretat.

1968

  • National Gallery of Art. European Paintings and Sculpture, Illustrations. Washington, 1968: 26, repro.

1975

  • European Paintings: An Illustrated Summary Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1975: 82, repro.

  • Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington. New York, 1975: 449, no. 654, repro.

1977

  • Werner, A. "The Two Souls of Gustave Courbet." Art and Artists 12, no. 3 (June 1977): 4-9, repro. p. 7, no. 3, as Beach at Etretat.

1978

  • Fernier, Robert. La Vie et l'oeuvre de Gustave Courbet, catalogue raisonné. Peintures, 1866-1877, dessins, sculptures. Paris, 1978: 98, no. 725, as Retour de pêche.

1984

  • Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington. Rev. ed. New York, 1984: 445, no. 642, color repro.

1985

  • Courthion, Pierre. L'opera completa di Courbet. Milan, 1985: no. 699, repro.

  • European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1985: 102, repro.

2000

  • Eitner, Lorenz. French Paintings of the Nineteenth Century, Part I: Before Impressionism. The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue. Washington, D.C., 2000: 142-145, color repro.

2007

  • Gustave Courbet Exh. cat., Galeries nationales du Grand Palais, Paris; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Musée Fabre, Montpellier, 2007:296

Inscriptions

lower left: G. Courbet.

Wikidata ID

Q20188742

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