Sea View, Calm Weather (Vue de mer, temps calme)

Édouard Manet (French, 1832–1883)

1864

Medium
Oil on canvas
Classification
Painting
Dimensions
73.6 × 92.6 cm (29 × 36 1/2 in.); Framed: 97.8 × 117.2 × 12.7 cm (38 1/2 × 46 1/8 × 5 in.)
Culture
France
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago, Painting and Sculpture of Europe
Credit line
Potter Palmer Collection
Rights
Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
Who can see it
Little Ones profiles and older: it shows gentle subjects for the very young. How works are placed

View at the Art Institute of Chicago

About this work

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.

Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0