Detail of Fishing Boat by Courbet in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, January 2023

Title: The Fishing Boat

Artist: Gustave Courbet (French, Ornans 1819–1877 La Tour-de-Peilz)

Date: 1865

Medium: Oil on canvas

Dimensions: 25 1/2 x 32 in. (64.8 x 81.3 cm)

Classification: Paintings

Credit Line: Gift of Mary Goldenberg, 1899

Accession Number: 99.11.3


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.

Text from: www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/436012