Page 47 - Courbet

T he scale of some of Courbet’s major exhibited
landscape paintings was large enough – often
approaching 1.5 square meters – that they
could easily occupy the viewer’s entire field of vision.

During the 1850s the majority of Courbet’s figurative

paintings, especially A Burial at Ornans and The Studio

of the Painter, had been enormous canvases. The point

of these pictures and Courbet’s large landscapes was

not just to prove his ability to paint in the dimensions

of history painting, but to recreate the experience of

scale he found in nature.One of his greatest landscapes,

The Stream of the BlackWell (Fig. 50) is of a place still

only accessible on foot, in a depression carved out of Fig. 50. The Stream of the Black Well,The National Gallery of
Art,Washington, D.C.
rock and soil, visible only on close approach along a
path that is today obscure. Both stunningly beautiful

and private, one is immersed in the sounds of the forest, the gurgling stream echoing off massive boulders,

leaves fluttering in the wind and birds chattering or taking wing from one perch to another.These were familiar

places and experiences for Courbet, who had known them since childhood.They represent a nostalgic return to

a kind of elemental comfort zone, both a refreshing and a reawakening of the senses in a primeval environment.

The erotic overtones of such experiences are obvious. Immersed in such scenes, the entire body is involved.
Whereas the flow of water symbolising nature in Courbet’s versions of La Source is experienced in those pictures
through the female intermediary, in the Black Well nature is directly felt. Even if pigments are the intermediary,
Courbet’s technique emphasises their materiality to convey that they are tangible, hence of the same world
as what they represent. Brushstrokes simulate the flow of water, the presence of which in these landscapes
becomes a material performance more than a metaphor of the ritual of purification that Courbet’s return to
the countryside implies. The stains of the city, of controversy and of searching for patronage are temporarily
washed away. Courbet’s narcissistic preoccupation with his persona finds reassurance. Vulnerabilities seem
forgotten; self-confidence can be restored.

Nature plays a double role for Courbet. On the one hand he depends on it in order to sustain his identity and
ground his self-assurance.Yet at the same time he lords over it. His self-immersion in it is a form of exploitation

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