GUSTAVE COURBET (1819-1877)
The Falaises d'Etretat (70 to 90 m - 230 to 300 ft)
La Porte d'aval, L'Aiguille, La Porte d'Amont, La Manneporte
France (Normandie)
In Les falaises d'Etretat après l'orage, 1870, oil on canvas, 162cm x130 - 51.2 x 63.8 in,
Musée d'Orsay Paris
The cliffs
Etretat is best known for its chalk cliffs, including three natural arches and a pointed formation called L'Aiguille (the Needle), which rises 70 m- 230 ft above the sea. The Etretat Chalk Complex, as it is known, consists of a complex stratigraphy of Turonian and Coniacian chalks. Some of the cliffs are as high as 90 metres (300 ft).
These cliffs and the associated resort beach attracted artists including Eugène Boudin, Gustave Courbet and Claude Monet. They were featured prominently in the 1909 Arsène Lupin novel The Hollow Needle by Maurice Leblanc. They also feature in the 2014 film Lucy, directed by Luc Besson.
Two of the three famous arches are visible from the town, the Porte d'Aval (Aval Cliff) and the Porte d'Amont (Amont Cliff). The Manneporte (Main Door) is the third and the biggest one, and cannot be seen from the town.
- La Porte d'Aval (Aval Cliff )
On the foreshore cleared by the sea at the foot of the Porte d'Aval, one notices, dug into the limestone bedrock and partially covered with green algae, ancient parks а oysters, whose culture lasted only a few years.
- L'arche et L'aiguille (The Ark and the Needle)
An underground river, then marine erosion formed a natural arch and a estimated 55 meter to 70 meters high needle, relic piece of the cliff. Maurice Leblanc describes it in these terms in his novel The Hollow Needle (1909) : "An enormous roach, more than eighty meters high, colossal obelisk, plumb on its granite base" At his time, the site already attracted many tourists among them "lupinophiles" admirers of Arsene Lupine: American students came for the key to the cave, where the "gentleman burglar" had found the treasure of kings of France.
- The Manneporte and the Trou à L'homme (The Maindoor and Hole of the man)
From the old French manna door, "big door, main door". It is wider than the cliff of Aval and is located behind it. Above а side of the arch, we see a huge black hole in the cliff: le Trou à l'homme (the Hole of the Man) that takes its name from a Swedish sailor, sole survivor of the sinking of his ship due to violent storm that would have lasted nearly 24 hours. It would have been projected by a blade into this cavity, thereby assuring its survival. The so called Hole of the Man is accessible by an iron ladder and it is always off-water at the time of the tides.
The long tunnel which opens to the "Hole of the Man " leads а Creek Petit Port at the mouth of the valleuse Jambourg actually a beach at the foot of the needle and framed by two large doors.
You can reach the top of the cliff by a staircase directly at the end of the Perrey, followed by a well laid out, sloping path that runs alongside the golf course, to the right you climb to the top. One enjoys at the same time, of the sight on the village, on the needle and on Manneporte. You can also enter the little natural refuge nicknamed "Chambre des Demoiselles" ( Young ladies room) described by Maurice Leblanc.
- La porte d'Amont (Amont Cliff)
The Porte d'Amont is the smallest of the three doors and the most visually famous. The french writer Guy de Maupassant compares this cliff of upstream to " an elephant that plunges its trunk into the water ". At the top of the cliff stands the stone silhouette of the chapel Notre-Dame-de-la-Garde, protector of fishermen. The present building succeeds a chapel of the nineteenth century. You can also reach the cliff but the staircase is much steeper. The current building succeeds a 19th century chapel in neo-gothic style. It was destroyed by the occupier during the Second World War. Then one arrive at the monument and the museum made by the architect Gaston Delaune and dedicated to Charles Nungesser and François Coli, two aviators who tried to rally New York in 1927 and which were seen for the last time in this place, after Having taken off from Le Bourget on the edge of their plane, the mythical White Bird.
The GR 21 long-distance hiking path (Le Havre to Le Tréport) passes through the town.
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The Painter
Jean Désiré Gustave Courbet was a French painter who led the Realist movement in 19th-century French painting. Committed to painting only what he could see, he rejected academic convention and the Romanticism of the previous generation of visual artists. His independence set an example that was important to later artists, such as the Impressionists and the Cubists. Courbet occupies an important place in 19th-century French painting as an innovator and as an artist willing to make bold social statements through his work.Courbet's paintings of the late 1840s and early 1850s brought him his first recognition. They challenged convention by depicting unidealized peasants and workers, often on a grand scale traditionally reserved for paintings of religious or historical subjects. Courbet's subsequent paintings were mostly of a less overtly political character: landscapes, seascapes, hunting scenes, nudes and still lifes. He was imprisoned for six months in 1871 for his involvement with the Paris Commune, and lived in exile in Switzerland from 1873 until his death.
Courbet painted a few mountains in his life : the Juras mountains around Ornans ( France) and a few mountains in Switzerland during his exil; Like many painters of the 19th Century, Courbet didn't name the mountain he painted; he liked to give a description of the general atmosphere rather than a precise geographical location.
"I am fifty years old and I have always lived in freedom; let me end my life free; when I am dead let this be said of me: 'He belonged to no school, to no church, to no institution, to no academy, least of all to any régime except the régime of liberty."