Gustave Courbet

Anonymous sale, M^e Chevallier, Paris, Hôtel Drouot, 5 May 1883, lot 16 (titled Source de la Loue);

Kapferer, Paris;

Bernheim-Jeune, Paris, 1921;

Acquired from the above, private collection, Wädenswil, 1935-1936;

Anonymous sale, Sotheby's, 15 April 1970, lot 13;

Anonymous sale, Sotheby's, 5 December 1973, lot 10;

Acquired at the above sale.

R. Fernier, La Vie et l'œuvre de Gustave Courbet, catalogue raisonné, Paris, 1979, tome II, illustrated pp. 76-77, no. 672.

Zürich, Kunsthaus, Gustave Courbet, 1935-36, no. 106;

Ornans, Musée-Maison natale, Hommage à Gustave Courbet, 1977, no. 13.

Courbet is above all a painter of landscapes, they constitute nearly two thirds of his work. He started painting landscapes in his youth, already displaying a personal style but still relying on the rules of perspective. It was from 1850-1855 that he began to develop an original relationship with the landscape, seeking above all to appropriate the profound reality of a site. It is certainly his love for his native region, the Franche-Comté, and his great knowledge of these rough and wild lands, that allow him to break with tradition and create a completely innovative style.

In her introduction to the chapter on Landscapes in the Gustave Courbet exhibition catalog (Paris, New York, Montpellier, 2007-2008, p. 229), Laurence des Cars explains the importance of the landscape in his work: "Courbet undermines the traditional codes of the genre, no longer relying on external perception but recreating from within a subjective understanding of the world... Retaining [from the sites] only the most visually salient elements, he delineates an intimate geography dominated by the idea of retreat and solitude... Courbet strips the composition of all picturesque and human touches, daring to place emptiness and darkness at the center of the painting and concerned only with the density of matter, from dark waters to stratified rocks."

The present work, Paysage près d'Ornans, shows the beauty of the high rocks of the Franche-Comté region, sculpted by the light and cut against the sky. At their foot, the dark mass of a river and the lighter green vegetation contrast with the bareness of the rock. Courbet's synthetic vision captures the structure of the elements and the roughness of the rock with flat areas of color alternating with a fragmented touch. The rocky wall faces the viewer, dominating him from its height. No human or anecdotal element disturbs the grandeur of the site, which imposes its tangible, obvious, eternal presence on the viewer.

Paysage près d'Ornans can be compared to several works of similar subject matter, for example Les Roches de Mouthier, le ravin (ca. 1855, Phillips Collection, Washington, inv. 0342), Les Roches de Hautepierre-Mouthier (fig. 1, ca. 1860, Art Institute, Chicago, inv. 1967.140) and Paysage de Chauveroche dans les Vaux d'Ornans (1864, private collection). It is very interesting to note that with this group of works, "a serial approach to landscape in Courbet's work" is established ( (cf. cat. exhibition Gustave Courbet, Paris, New York, Montpellier, 2007-2008, p. 262). This approach culminated in the series dedicated to the Puits-Noirs and to the Sources de la Loue, which were the culmination of Courbet's research into the plastic and evocative power of rocky material.

With the series, Courbet "sets an important milestone in his posterity, which is played out here more with Cézanne than with Monet. The man from Provence in Aix-en-Provence found in the rocks of the Jura of his elder a common fascination for the mineral, the telluric forces of nature and the permanence of their imprint on a territory. The spirit of Courbet's ceaseless quest will animate the Cézanne absolute and will link in a certain way the rocks of Ornans and other Mouthier, to the Sainte Victoire " (Laurence des Cars, cat. exh. 2007-2008, op. cit. p. 263).