1864
oil
canvas
From the collection of Art Institute of Chicago
Sea View, Calm Weather (Vue de mer, temps calme) is a 1864 oil by Edouard Manet, a Impressionism work, held at Art Institute of Chicago.
You see a choppy blue sea dotted with ships—some steamers, some sailboats—under a pale sky. Manet painted this in Paris from vacation sketches. The brushstrokes are loose and quick, almost like handwriting, yet you can still tell each boat apart. It’s one of his first seascapes, a subject he kept coming back to. If you like the way the paint sits thick and visible on the canvas, look up impasto.
Although boldly brushed and almost calligraphic in form, the vessels in this composition remain identifiable as specific types. To the right of center, a side-wheel packet steamer heads up the English Channel, leaving slower sailing boats in its wake. This is one of Édouard Manet’s earliest paintings of the sea, a subject to which he returned repeatedly. He painted it in Paris along with two or three other works based on sketches he made on a vacation with his family in the northern French port of Boulogne-sur-Mer.
The artist; probably sold to Louis Gauthier-Lathuille, Paris, 1881, for 1,000 francs [per transcript in Leenhoff, c. 1910, p. 80]; sold to Durand-Ruel, Paris, February 20, 1900, for 20,000 francs [per Durand-Ruel, Paris, stock book (no. 5699, as La Rade de Boulogne)]; transferred from Durand-Ruel, Paris, to Durand-Ruel, New York, December 1900 [this and the following per Durand-Ruel, Paris, stock book (no. 2428, as Marine, la Rade de Boulogne)]; sold to Edward Fullerton Milliken, New York, December 31, 1900, for $10,000; sold, American Art Galleries, New York, February 14, 1902, lot 17, to…
Copenhagen, Ordrupgaard, Edouard Manet, September 15-December 10, 1989. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, for exhibit, "Manet and the Civil War", The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, June 3–August 17, 2003. Fort Worth, Tex., Kimbell Museum of Art, The Impressionists: Master Paintings from the Art Institute of Chicago, June 29–November 2, 2008, cat. 9 (ill.). Venice, Palazzo Ducale, Manet (1832–1883) and Venice, April 24 – August 18, 2013, cat. 77.
Read the full account in the museum source.
Édouard Manet didn’t have much time to make his mark—he died at 51—but he used every year.
See the richer artist page
