The Burial at Sea of a Marine Officer Serving under Louis XVI

Eugène Isabey dreamed of becoming a sailor. Refusing to relinquish his passion, he specialized in marine painting. Inspired by English painters, notably John Constable and J.M.W. Turner, this Romantic artist painted the ocean in all its moods. A perfectionist, he attended to every detail and enthusiastically embraced innovations in naval construction. “Isabey is the only painter capable of building a boat,” said Johan Barthold Jongkind, one of his students. Exhibited in the Salon of 1836, The Burial at Sea of a Marine Officer Serving under Louis XVI elicited surprise. The subject is impressive: the stormy sky, the rough sea, the sails flapping in the wind and the body, enveloped in a white shroud, thrown into the sea at the sound of the cannon, marking the absolution of a marine officer whose identity remains unknown.