The Cliff at Étretat after a Storm

Painted in 1870 and held by Musées Nationaux Récupération, this large seascape captures the distinctive chalk cliffs at Étretat on the Normandy coast in the aftermath of a storm — a subject that would occupy Monet obsessively fifteen years later. Courbet worked at Étretat in the late 1860s, producing a series of cliff paintings that established the site as a significant subject in French painting. The storm's aftermath — the roiled sea subsiding, the sky clearing, the battered cliff face — gave Courbet the material he prized: nature in the process of returning to equilibrium after violent meteorological disturbance. This painting anticipates the Impressionist generation's engagement with weather as the primary subject of landscape.

Post-storm sea requires a different approach from both calm water and peak-storm subjects: the waves are still disturbed but no longer chaotic, their crests showing broken white against the settling swell. The Étretat cliffs — distinctive white chalk arches and needles — are rendered with geological attention. The sky would show clearing weather, with breaking cloud and strengthening light.