The Fishing Boat

Courbet painted this work during an intensely productive visit to Trouville with James McNeill Whistler from September until November 1865; in a letter to his father, the artist boasted that he had executed "thirty-five paintings" in a very short time, which "stunned everybody." In his choice of subject, Courbet followed in the wake of Eugène Isabey, Johan Barthold Jongkind, and Eugène Boudin; but unlike many of the canvases executed at the time, this fishing boat, rigged and filled with equipment, is the focus of the composition rather than a subordinate element. In 1899, this became the first work by Courbet to enter the Museum’s collection. (Source: The Metropolitan Museum of Art)