The Black Rocks at Trouville

Gustave Courbet

National Gallery of Art

We stand on a beach lined with black rocks and boulders looking out onto the water below a brick-red sky that dominates this nearly square landscape painting. The sky along the top edge of the canvas is turquoise but it quickly fades to rich, salmon pink and then to deep red along the horizon, which comes only a quarter of the way up the composition. Steel-gray clouds ripple across the width of the painting. Two sailboats float in the water in the far distance. The water is painted the same turquoise of the sky with some reflections of the deep pink and red. Close to us, water breaks around the jagged black rocks beyond the a strip of mustard-yellow and tan sand that lines the lowest edge of the canvas. The artist signed the work in dark red paint in the lower left corner: “G. Courbet.”