Page 44 - Courbet

Fig. 47. The Source, 1868, Musée d’Orsay, Paris. as water spills over the nude’s hand into a forest pool (Fig. 47).
For our interests these paintings present nature as a source
of inspiration and productivity, coloured by the erotic
implications of flowing water in relation to the female form.
They lead us, finally, to Courbet’s pure landscapes in which
the literal personification of nature as a realm of feminine
physicality becomes superfluous. Even if sexuality in some
form certainly underlies such pictures, as I will show, it is
through pictorial means that Courbet manifests its presence.
No other source for Courbet’s inspiration stimulated a level
of productivity comparable to that offered by his native land.
It was the place where he was born and raised, the spaces
that stimulated and nurtured his art. Before looking at some
pictures themselves it is worth recalling how artists often
refer to their works as progeny. Paintings are a legacy, a means
of communication beyond the grave. They are thus a more
reliable means of self-perpetuation than children; we refer to
them, after all, by the artist’s name.

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Courbet’s experience of the countryside was a deeply personal one. He returned time after time to
Ornans, where he painted the grey cliffs, deep woods, streams and caverns that populated rural
Franche-Comté. In the history of the formation of modern France, Franche-Comté – which means
Free County – was a relative newcomer, annexed by Louis XIV in 1573 through the Treaty of Nijmegen. Its
independent traditions persisted through its resistance to domination by Paris and it was a hotbed of radical
thought as exemplified by Courbet’s compatriot the anarchist Proudhon and others such as Charles Fourier,
Victor Considerant andVictor Hugo.Whether because he was close to his family or as a refuge from the critical
beating his work so often took in Paris, Courbet travelled to and fro between Paris, centre of the art market,

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