A single huge wave rises and begins to curl, its crest streaked with white foam, over a dark blue-green sea. A heavy bank of purple-gray cloud fills the sky, and far off on the horizon a few tiny red sails catch the light. At the bottom left, two rocks lie on the dark sand. Gustave Courbet painted a whole series of these waves in 1869 at Étretat on the Normandy coast, and finished some in Paris in 1870.

The Berlin museum says he studied the breakers through a large window in a studio right by the sea, then built them up in layers of paint, spread with a palette knife, which gives the water an almost wall-like solidity. Hugo von Tschudi bought this version for the Nationalgalerie from the dealer Théodore Duret in Paris at the end of 1904, and it was formally accepted as a gift in 1906. Paul Cézanne, comparing it with the Louvre's Wave, called it one of the wonders of the century and said the whole room smelled of sea foam. It is in the Alte Nationalgalerie in Berlin.