Musées de Langres – Maison des Lumières Denis Diderot – Musée d'Art et d'Histoire

The painter and sculptor Gustave Courbet was the leader of Realism, a movement that emerged in the mid-19th century in reaction to Romanticism. In this stormy landscape, with its threatening sky and palette of blues and greys, patches of white emphasise the clouds and spume, as waves crash against a dark rocky cliff that turns deep red at the top. Two birds struggle against the wind at the centre of the painting. The dark colour scheme and thick brushstrokes convey the power of the elements, lending raw intensity to the scene. This work, which probably dates back to the early 1870s, depicts the sea at Étretat, the Normandy resort where Courbet painted a series of seascapes. Paintings on this subject were sought after and several of them, including this one, were either produced by Courbet in collaboration with his studio or painted entirely by a member of his studio. A brownish-red signature is clearly visible in the lower left-hand corner. It may have been added later for commercial reasons.

This stormy landscape was part of the collection of the brothers Charles (1848–1920) and Joseph (1850–1941) Royer, local Langres art collectors who built up large collections of paintings, decorative arts and books in the late 19th and the first half of the 20th centuries. A member of the Société Historique et Archéologique de Langres which ran the museum, Charles Royer may have purchased this painting at the same time as he acquired Courbet’s Une combe dans le Jura on behalf of the museum, at an 1897 exhibition of Courbet’s works, at the École des Beaux-arts in Paris.