Gustave Courbet

Spink & Son, Ltd., London
The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri (acquired from the above in 1935)
The William Rockhill Nelson Trust, Kansas City, Missouri (and sold: Christie's, New York, March 1, 1990, lot 83, illustrated)
Acquired at the above sale by the present owner

Paris, Rond-Point de Alma, Exposition des Oeuvres de M.G. Courbet, 1867, no. 116
New York, Wildenstein, Courbet, 1948-1949, no. 26, illustrated as Low Tide
New York, Wildenstein, Romantics and Realists, 1966, no. 25, illustrated, as Low Tide 
Yamanashi Prefectural Museum of Art, Coexistence with Nature, The Barbizon Artists: Corot, Rousseau, Millet, Courbet, June 9-July 22, 2001, no. 83
Nagoya, City Art Museum; Morioka, Iwate Museum of Art; Hiroshima Museum of Art, Van Gogh, Millet and the Barbizon Artists, 2004, no. 98, illustrated

Handbook of The Nelson Gallery of Art:  Atkins Museum, Kansas City, 1973, vol. I, p. 158, illustrated
Robert Fernier, La Vie et L'Oeuvre de Gustave Courbet, Lausanne and Paris, 1978, vol. I, p. 264, no. 495, illustrated
Pierre Courthion, Tout l'oeuvre peint de Courbet, Paris, 1987, no. 461, illustrated

The following condition report was kindly provided by Simon Parkes Art Conservation, Inc.: This painting has been quite recently restored and should be hung in its current condition. The paint layer has been cleaned, the canvas lined and very few retouches have been added. The dark specks that are visible here and there in the sky are all original to Courbet's technique. This picture is well presented with almost no restorations and is clearly in lovely condition.
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

Gustave Courbet painted Marine: Les Équilleurs in 1865 or 1866 during a campaign along the Normandy coast near the fashionable resort of Trouville.  With its expressively restrained composition and beautifully observed cloud effects, Marine: Les Équilleurs represents one of Courbet's most significant contributions to the rapidly changing art of landscape painting in nineteenth-century France.

Courbet was attracted to Trouville by the opportunity to mix with a flashy social world and build a portrait painting practice; but confronted with the broad Normandy beaches and rapidly changing skies over the Channel, he turned back toward landscape painting.  In some twenty-five paysages de mer painted in an intensive burst, he explored bold sky effects, seemingly unpaintable weather extremes, and brilliant color juxtapositions that carried his realistically grounded art to the edge of abstraction.  In Marine: Les Équilleurs, only a few local fishermen digging for équilles (eel-like fish that burrow in the sands at lowtide) and a flock of crinolined, parasoled tourists coming to watch provide a human dimension that anchors Courbet's vast, moving sky to the softly colored sands spreading below.   

Courbet included Marine: Les Équilleurs in his one-man show outside the fairgrounds of the Exposition Universelle in 1867 -- a promotional strategy that angered the staid art establishment but which allowed Courbet to present revolutionary images such as the paysages de mer to their best self-explanatory advantage.

This catalogue note was written by Alexandra Murphy.