Oil on canvas, 'L'Immensité', Gustave Courbet, 1869

A beach in the foreground; beyond, the sea, under a cloudy sky with purple and orange hues.

Bequeathed by Constantine Alexander Ionides

Formerly in the collection of Henri Hecht, who lent the work to the 1882 Courbet exhibition at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. Purchased by Constantine Alexander Ionides from Hollender and Cremetti, 26 February 1883, for £500. Subsequently bequeathed to the V&A in 1900.

Historical significance: This painting belongs to a series of seascape at low tide inaugurated in 1865 while Courbet sojourned in Trouville (Normandy). CAI.59 shows a serene sea at low tide overwhelmed by a cloudy sky enlivened by a warm palette. It was executed at Etretat on the Normandy coastline during the summer 1869 and is a fine example of Courbet’s late period when his art came under the influence of both John Constable (1776-1837) and J.M.W. Turner (1775-1851).
There is no human reference in this painting entirely devoted to the emptiness of the large sky reflecting onto the sea surface. Particularly remarkable is the materiality given to the painting thanks to thick layers of paint applied with a knife. There is no equivalent in French art at this period to Courbet’s experimentations, which enjoyed a great success, at the time, in the British art market.
This painting witnessed a turning point in Courbet’s career as he progressively abandoned any representation of details to focus on the global rendering of forms after the motif, so moving away from naturalistic representation. CAI.59 illustrates therefore a new stage in the development of realism, gradually evolving towards impressionism.
This powerful seascape may have been influenced by the panoramic views of the early French photographer Gustave Le Gray.

Although France and England became the new centres of landscape art in the 18th century, the Italian and Dutch traditions retained their authority. However the Arcadian vision of Italy increasingly tended towards a more precise observation of nature. Some of the most exciting developments took place in Venice, in the soft scenes of Francesco Zuccarelli (1702-1788), inspired by Claude Lorrain (1604-1682), and the fresh, spontaneous landscapes of Marco Ricci (1676-1730). Wealthy patrons, often accompanied by artists, on The Grand Tour, created a market for veduta and capriccio paintings, respectively topographical and fantasist landscape paintings. Landscape conventions were further enriched by foreign artists working in Italy, responding both to the beauty of Italian light and scenery celebrated by the Latin poets and vividly captured in the most popular landscapes of Claude Lorrain, Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665) and Gaspard Dughet (1615-1675).

Gustave Courbet (1819-1877) was born in Ornans in Franche-Comté where he first trained with Père Baud (or Beau), a former pupil of Antoine-Jean Gros (1771-1835), and later in Besançon with Charles-Antoine Flageoulot (1774-1840), a former pupil of Jacques-Louis David. He then entered the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. He travelled in the Netherlands in 1846 and was influenced by the Dutch Old masters' free technique. Upon his return to Paris he specialised in landscape and genre paintings.

This painting is a fine example of Courbet's late period when he started moving away from naturalistic representation. It depicts the sea at low tide near Etretat on the Normandy coastline, a spot praised by painters since the mid-century.

CAI.59