Painted in the autumn of 1865 at Trouville, the present work epitomizes the flowering of Courbet’s marine painting. The fascination it held over him is palpable, and not surprisingly for an artist who couldn’t have grown up further away from it in the mountain-locked Jura. The low horizon line and vast arc of sky stand in contrast to the enclosed valleys he painted in and around his native Ornans, and the tall-masted ships denote a sense of freedom and infinity, and of the power and vastness of the elements. Indeed, for all its openness, there is also something very elemental about the painting and its materiality – the clouds as well as the water possessing a powerful material presence accentuated by Courbet’s technique of rendering them with thick impasto applied with a palette knife rather than a brush. It is this elementalism - a sense of being reminded where we come from - that lies at the very heart of all Courbet’s work, whether his landscapes, marines, or figural works. Expressive in their power, and no doubt influential on succeeding generations of artists from August Strindberg (fig. 1) to Anselm Kiefer and Gerhard Richter – paintings like Marine are at the same t.mes deeply rooted in bygone European art, and in particular the French, British, and German Romantics. The skitting clouds find parallels in the agitated skies of John Constable (fig. 2) or J.M.W. Turner, the tiny daub of red denoting the ship’s flag a nod to the infamous red buoy in the latter’s Helvoetsluys of 1832 (fig. 3). The sea reminds of Delacroix and Géricault, while the composition and ships echo Caspar David Friedrich’s Baltic views.

The breezy energy and sense of release exuded by the painting are no doubt a reflection of Courbet’s elated frame of mind at the t.mes , buoyed by a combination of his professional success and his growing libido: ‘I am here in Trouville in delightful circumstances,’ he wrote to his old Ornans friend Urbain Cuenot on 16 September, soon after his arrival. ‘The Casino has given me a splendid apartment overlooking the sea and there I paint the prettiest women of Trouville.’ ¹
Indeed his trip was made in the company of the American painter James McNeill Whistler and his model and mistress Jo Hefferman, whose beauty Courbet greatly admired and whom he went on to paint in Jo, la belle irlandaise, by his own account his favourite painting (fig. 4). Women of society flocked to him to be painted, and the dozen or so marines he painted that autumn were the perfect artistic refuge from his formal commissions. He concluded, in a letter from Trouville to his family dated 17 November, ‘As usual I went to Trouville for three days and stayed for three months. This t.mes I did not play my cards wrong. I have doubled my reputation and have made the acquaintance of everyone who can be useful. I have received over two thousand ladies in my studio, all wishing to have their portraits painted after they saw the portrait of princess Karoly and the portrait of Mlle Aubé.’²

Note on Provenance

This painting is offered by the Louis-Dreyfus Family collects ions and bears testimony to the late William Louis-Dreyfus’ aesthetic intuition, curiosity and passion for collects ing on a personal level. William Louis-Dreyfus (1932–2016) was a distinguished lawyer, businessman, art collects or, and published poet. After graduating from Duke University and Duke University of Law, Louis-Dreyfus practised law in New York, before joining the Louis Dreyfus Group of diversified companies in 1965 (founded by his great-grandfather in 1851). He held the position of chief executive officer from 1969 until his retirement in 2006. In 2014 he was awarded the Robert Mills Architect.mes dal by the Smithsonian American Art Museum ‘for leadership in American Art’. That same year he also received an ‘Advancement of American Art’ award from the National Academy Museum and School in New York City.

In 2013 Louis-Dreyfus established The William Louis-Dreyfus Foundation and later donated over 3,500 works of art to the Foundation. Functioning as an educational resource, the foundation highlights the importance of art and increases public awareness of self-taught and emerging artists. It also intends to benefit other specific educational purposes, in particular the educational programmes of the Harlem Children's Zone. The Foundation’s collects ion is made up of works by self-taught and contemporary artists including James Castle, Rackstraw Downes, Red Grooms, Alison Hall, Stanley Lewis, Catherine Maize, Sangram Majumdar, Claes Oldenburg, Nellie Mae Rowe, E.M. Saniga, Beatrice Scaccia, Judith Scott, Leopold Strobl, Sam Szafran, Bill Traylor and Purvis Young, as well as additional pieces on loan from the Louis-Dreyfus Family collects ion.

¹P. Ten-Doesschate Chu, Letters of Gustave Courbet, Chicago & London, 1992, p. 267.
²Ten-Doesschate Chu, 1992, p. 268.