Oil on blue paper, 11ins x 14ins (22 1/2 ins x 25ins ) Painted circa 1866.
Courbet visited London in 1862 , where he might have seen John Constable's "Rainstorm over the Sea" . He started painting coastal views about that time, when he visited Deauville in Normandy in 1866 , there he meets with Claude Monet, J A Mcneill Whistler and Eugene Boudin.
He painted La Trombe in 1866 which this oil could be a preparatory for.
The similarity between La Trombe and Constable's Rainstorm are clear to see.