Read the visual description
Moss-green land rising to a tree-topped bluff follows the curve of a sandy beach surrounding a pale blue cove in this horizontal landscape painting. The hill and olive-green trees take up most of the height of the left side of the composition. The beach curves from the lower right corner back and to our left, and curves around the cliff face of the bluff. Closest to us, the land is flecked with saffron gold, and two dark brown patches smear the sand. The beach or a sandbar creates a strip of pale brown across the horizon, which comes halfway up the canvas. Distant hills to our left are suggested by a battleship-gray slope. The slate-blue sky above is layered with swirls and bands of oyster-white and pewter-gray clouds. The artist signed the lower left, “COROT.”
National Gallery of Art · Painting
Beach near Etretat
Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot
- Date
- c. 1872
- Medium
- oil on canvas
- Dimensions
- overall: 12.3 x 25.5 cm (4 13/16 x 10 1/16 in.) framed: 25.4 x 38.1 x 3.2 cm (10 x 15 x 1 1/4 in.)
- Classification
- Painting
- Accession number
- 1970.17.117
- Credit line
- Ailsa Mellon Bruce Collection
- Time span
- 1851 to 1875
- Department
- CF
Subjects and terms
- painted surface
- French
- France
- landscape
- French Paintings of the Nineteenth Century. Part I: Before Impressionism [1800-1859]
- Romantic
- Coast
- Etretat
Provenance
F. Stumpf, Paris; (Stumpf sale, Hôtel Drouot, Paris 27 November 1894, no. 19, as _Marine_); purchased by (F. and J. Tempelaere, Paris).[1] Aimé Diot [d. 1896], Paris; (his sale, Hôtel Drouot, Paris, 8 March 1897, no. 35, as _Falaises_). Nicolas Auguste Hazard [1834-1913], Paris; (Hazard sale, Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, 3 December 1919, no. 91, as _La Plage_); purchased by Rosenthal, Paris; (Rosenthal sale, Paris, 9 May 1934, no. 67); purchased by Dr. George Viau [1855-1939], Paris; (his estate sale, part I, 11 December 1942, no. 81).[2] Baron Pellenc, Paris, in 1944. André Schoëller [1879-1955], Paris, in 1945.[3] Captain Edward H. Molyneux [1891-1974], Paris, by 1952;[4] sold 1955 to Ailsa Mellon Bruce [1901-1969], New York; bequest 1970 to NGA. [1] Letter from Jean Dieterle, peintre-expert, dated 11 September 1970, in NGA curatorial files, gives Tempelaere as purchaser. [2] According to press reports and an annotated sales catalogue, copy in NGA curatorial records, the picture sold for 560,000 francs to an unnamed purchaser. [3] Pellenc and Schoeller per Dieterle letter cited in note 1. Schoeller acted as expert at the 1942 Viau sale. [4] Exhibited in _French Paintings from the Molyneux Collection_, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1952.
Inscription
lower left: COROT
NGA object ID 52261. Collection metadata is reproduced under CC0. This work is included because its NGA published-image record is marked open access; visitors should recheck the source record before substantial reuse.