James McNeill Whistler - The Sea 1865
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The Sea 1865
52x95cm oil/canvas
Montclair Art Museum, Montclair, NJ
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From Montclair Art Museum:
This seascape from the French Channel resort of Trouville was painted outdoors, or en plen air. Whistler's fresh response to nature was influenced by such avant-garde French artists as Gustave Courbet, whom the young American was visiting when he painted this masterpiece. However, The Sea also demonstrates Whistler's growing disenchantment with the "here and now" of Courbet's naturalism. In The Sea, nature coexists with the artist's imagination. Whistler induces a meditative mood through reductive composition, silvery light, semitransparent brushwork, harmonious pale colors, and flattened space - all qualities that influenced the American Tonalists