The Wave (1869)

The Wave is a oil on canvas painting done by Gustave Courbet in 1869. The piece grabbed my attention to the feeling it gave me upon viewing it. The dark colours and the grey of the sky gives the painting a foreboding feel to it. The somewhat empty looking half of the image that is the sky conveys a feeling of what i just described, emptiness. That feeling is what resinated with me. Igot lost staring into the painting. It’s simplistic use of just the dark blues and white captures the real murkiness of the water, with the small amount of light blue in the crashing of the wave over itself, adding to the foreboding feel to the painting but also making the viewer, me specifically in this case, feel the somewhat melancholy feeling these colours inspire. It is a captivating image despite it’s simplistic imagery and I feel like it is one of the finer peices housed in the Edinburgh National Gallery.