The Cliff at Étretat

The chalk cliffs at Étretat on the Normandy coast became one of the defining subjects of French landscape painting in the second half of the nineteenth century, and Courbet's engagements with them in the late 1860s preceded Monet's famous series by nearly two decades. This 1869 canvas, now at the Museu da Chácara do Céu in Rio de Janeiro, captures one of the cliff formations — likely the Porte d'Aval or the Aiguille — with the geological directness that distinguished Courbet's approach from the softer atmospheric treatments that would follow. For Courbet, the cliffs were another instance of his beloved limestone formations, transposed from the inland Jura to the coastal edge where rock meets sea. The painting's current location in Brazil reflects the extraordinary international dispersal of Courbet's work through the dealer and auction market of his era and after.

The cliff is rendered with confident impasto that gives the chalk its characteristic pale, massive quality. Sea is worked in horizontal marks of blue-grey below the cliff base. The scale of the geological formation is established through the relative treatment of any figures or boats placed at its base. Courbet's palette for Étretat tends toward cooler values than his inland landscapes — grey-white chalk, grey-green sea, pale overcast sky.