Free shipping on orders over $60$5 flat rate under $604 items: 10% off · 8 items: 20% off
You save $58.47
Free shipping over $60 · 30-day returns · Dispatched in 1–2 business days
Choose Waves Breaking as a hand painted oil painting and skip the compromise of printed wall decor. Based on Claude Monet's original. Our artists rebuild the seascape composition stroke by stroke, producing impressionist canvas wall art with lasting color depth.
1881
Oil on canvas
23 1/2 x 32 in (59.7 x 81.3 cm)
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, United States.
The dramatic compositions of Monet's paintings of the coast - with fragments of cliffs on one edge of the painting silhouetted against the huge expanse of sea, a spike of rock seen through a rock arch, twisted needle rocks thrusting from the sea - are very close to motifs in his favorite Japanese prints Great Wave off Kanagawa by Katsushika Hokusai. They suggest that, rather than transform these motifs into his own compositions as he had done, he wanted his increasingly elite audiences to recognise them as direct variations on Japanese themes.
Romantic and Realist painters had long painted the Norman coast. Manet and Monet's seascapes of the 1860s had been influenced by Japanese prints, as had Millet's paintings of cliffs above the sea of the early 1870s, and perhaps some of Courbet's paintings of motifs on the Channel coast in the late 1860s. In the 1880s Monet chose more abstract modes of embodying the thrust of cliffs and the surge of the sea around weathered rocks. In his Waves breaking 1881 he followed the example of Courbet's marines in which the artist had faced the sea directly and simply divided his painting horizontally into sea and sky - but Monet's painting is radically different. Gustave Courbet emphasised the substance of the sea - its luminosity, its vast recession - while in his paintings of breaking waves, he depicted, the glassy depths of a rearing wave and its break into foam. Monet's painting is rather disconcerting, consisting of row upon row of loose, curved strokes, painted with thick, pastey paint, with only a strip of flatter brushstrokes to give a sense of the horizontal stretch of the sea. Yet, as one looks, one begins to see that these abstract brushstrokes create a sense of the ceaseless movement of the waves and of the way those in the foreground catch a late gleam of cold late afternoon light. The painting is almost perverse in its assertion of the sheer materiality of the medium, yet this is a materiality that can momentarily convince that solidified paint is mobile and fluid.
The seascape subject is rebuilt stroke by stroke in oil, giving the finished canvas the depth expected of impressionist oil painting wall decor.
This is a genuine hand painted oil painting, not a canvas print. Our painters match the palette of Waves Breaking by eye and build up the seascape forms in thin layers, which is what gives the finished seascape oil painting its luminosity.
Hang this seascape oil painting above a sofa, console, or bed to give an entryway an instant focal point. Its impressionist palette works with both minimalist and period interiors, and the piece also makes a considered gift for housewarmings, weddings, and art lovers.
Order Waves Breaking as a hand painted oil painting on canvas and add lasting impressionist character to your entryway. Custom sizes, a digital proof before dispatch, and secure worldwide shipping are included.
| Size | Price |
|---|---|
| 20 X 24 in | $58.48 |
| 24 X 36 in | $91.98 |
| 30 X 40 in | $123.48 |
| 36 X 48 in | $176.98 |
| 48 X 72 in | $329.48 |
The sizes shown are the reproduction canvas sizes we paint to order. The dimensions given in a work's description refer to the original artwork and will differ from the sizes offered here. Not sure? Read the size guide or e-mail us.
Free on orders over $60; a flat $5 below that. Dispatched in 1–2 business days; 30 days to send it back. Full policy.
Every canvas is painted by hand in oils on artist-grade stretched canvas, with an extra blank border left for framing. How to care for your painting.
Measurements are on the size guide, or e-mail [email protected] and we reply within one business day.
