Edouard Manet - On the Beach Ceramic Tile

On the Beach (Sur la plage), painted by Édouard Manet in 1873 in oil on canvas, shows his wife Suzanne absorbed in a book and his brother Eugène gazing quietly out to sea during a three-week family stay at Berck-sur-Mer on the northern French coast. Both turn away from the viewer, absorbed in their own private worlds. Suzanne, protected from the sun and wind by a muslin veil and voluminous summer dress, sits beside Eugène as sailboats skim the high horizon beyond them. Manet painted directly on the beach, and actual grains of sand became mixed into the paint. Broad horizontal bands of blue and green, a muted palette and flattened perspective reveal his strong interest in Japanese prints and give the scene its quiet, slightly melancholic stillness.