Courbet the Wave

Beginning in the summer of 1869 Gustave Courbet produced a series of paintings depicting stormy seas during his stay at Etretat on the Normandy coast. The Wave (La Vague c.1872) exhibited in the National Gallery of Victoria is one such painting that features the central motif of a cresting wave. While many viewed the work as a simple realist seascape, the political implication of the work suggested by some of Courbet’s contemporaries is hardly discernable to the modern viewer. It can only be understood in light the historical context of the early 1870s in which France was entering a new democratic order and both Realism and Courbet had become inextricably bound to political affairs.
The aggression of the ocean fascinated Courbet; ‘The sea! The sea!... in her fury which growls, she reminds me of the caged monster who can devour me’. This feeling resonates in The Wave as the lack of foreground presents nature as an immediate threat. Drenched in the violent tide, the shore is no safe harbour, indicated by the burnt orange sand in the bottom left of the canvas. The tone of the painting is much like ‘bated breath’, as the imposing wall of water appears to standstill just before the point of breaking. Dark, billowing clouds echo the compositional structure of the wave. Thus the painting exemplifies the coherence of nature through the interdependence of sea and sky and together they make a formidable presence. Remarkable for its lack of human incident, Courbet seems unwilling to define man’s relationship to nature. It is as though his stay at Etretat revealed to him an unequivocal life force that could be observed in the natural world alone. His choice of colour and technique invests ‘the fluid medium of water with weight and solidity’. A deep blue-green offset by a foamy white recreates the ocean’s surging, spitting depth, while his gestural use of a loaded brush produces a tactile surface. Not all critics approved of Courbet’s “unrefined” technique; Maxime du Camp

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