{
 "schema": "nephos.method.v1",
 "slug": "courbet-etretat-after-the-storm",
 "title": "Gustave Courbet, La Falaise d’Étretat après l’orage",
 "urls": [
  "/studies/courbet-etretat-after-the-storm"
 ],
 "written": {
  "summary": "Begun at Étretat, where Courbet stayed in August and September 1869; signed and dated ’70 and shown at the Salon of 1870.",
  "items": [
   {
    "quote": "The clarity of the air and the limpid light after the rain are magnificently caught.",
    "source": "Musée d’Orsay, on this painting",
    "url": "https://www.musee-orsay.fr/en/artworks/la-falaise-detretat-apres-lorage-931"
   },
   {
    "quote": "By the time Courbet returned to Paris, he had painted twenty seascapes, with two of the largest views destined for the Salon of 1870",
    "source": "Sotheby’s, 2020, citing Courbet’s letters (ed. Chu, no. 69-9)",
    "url": "https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/auction/2020/19th-century-european-art/gustave-courbet-la-mer-orageuse"
   }
  ]
 },
 "records": [
  {
   "name": "The regional press",
   "detail": "La France, La Liberté, L’Abeille cauchoise and the Journal de Bolbec on the storm of 11–12 September 1869, read through Gallica.",
   "url": "https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k16312273/f3.item"
  },
  {
   "name": "Paris-Observatoire",
   "detail": "Daily rain and temperature for the whole stay, 183 km inland, the only open daily series for 1869 in the region.",
   "url": "https://meteofrance.s3.sbg.io.cloud.ovh.net/data/synchro_ftp/BASE/QUOT/Q_75_avant-1949_RR-T-Vent.csv.gz"
  },
  {
   "name": "Maupassant’s recollection",
   "detail": "Courbet painting at his window in the house against the Falaise d’Aval while a storm drove the sea at it, Gil Blas, 1886.",
   "url": "https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k75225119/f1.item"
  }
 ],
 "gaps": [
  "Météo-France’s open daily data has no station anywhere in Seine-Maritime for August or September 1869.",
  "The Observatoire’s printed bulletin logged Le Havre each morning, but the Météo-France library licenses its scans for private use only, so only the storm mornings are cited, not the daily table.",
  "Courbet’s own letters are quoted only as Sotheby’s summarises them."
 ],
 "tests": [
  {
   "claim": "“after the rain”, Orsay on this canvas, and the storm in its title.",
   "result": "On the night of Saturday 11 to Sunday 12 September 1869 a Channel storm struck Le Havre, Fécamp and Dieppe, the most violent at Le Havre since 1832. At 7 a.m. on the 12th the Observatoire’s bulletin logged Le Havre at 745 mm with a “tempête” and the sea “plus que furieuse”, and on the 13th reported the storm still blowing in the Channel. At Paris the afternoons cooled from 26.4° on the 9th to 18.5° on the 12th."
  },
  {
   "claim": "“pour voir un ouragan”: Maupassant on Courbet painting The Wave at Étretat in a storm.",
   "result": "A storm of that force is on record on this coast during Courbet’s stay, on 11–12 September 1869; Maupassant gives no year."
  },
  {
   "claim": "The day and the storm of the canvas itself.",
   "result": "The canvas is dated ’70, months after the stay; which storm, if any one, the title means is not recorded."
  }
 ],
 "finding": "Courbet’s stay at Étretat began in one of the driest Augusts on the Paris record and was broken, a month in, by the equinoctial storm of 11–12 September 1869, the worst at Le Havre in 37 years. On the coast, the Observatoire’s 7 a.m. bulletin logged a “tempête” at Le Havre on the morning of 12 September; the rest of the coastal evidence is the newspapers.",
 "verdicts": [
  {
   "claim": "A storm while Courbet was at Étretat",
   "verdict": "Partially agrees",
   "reason": "A great Channel storm struck this coast mid-stay; nothing ties the canvas to it."
  },
  {
   "claim": "Maupassant’s hurricane",
   "verdict": "Partially agrees",
   "reason": "A storm of that force is on record in September 1869; his account is undated."
  },
  {
   "claim": "The day painted",
   "verdict": "Unknown",
   "reason": "Dated ’70, months after the stay."
  }
 ],
 "limits": [
  "Paris-Observatoire is 183 km inland; it can show the season, not the coast.",
  "Météo-France flags the 1869 Paris values as filtered, not yet validated.",
  "The storm is known from newspapers written in its aftermath, not from instruments at Étretat."
 ]
}