Page 48 - Courbet

Fig. 51. The Source of the Loue, 1864,The Metropolitan Fig. 52. The Source of the Loue, 1864,The National Gallery of Art,
Museum, NewYork. Washington, D.C.

for both his ego and artistic purposes. This dialectic is nowhere better expressed than in his paintings of the
caves that are the sources of local rivers, in particular the source of the Loue. As he had for the Black Well, and
on the same large scale, he made several paintings of the Loue’s great cavern mouth. One of them (Fig. 51)
features the gargantuan flow from the gaping orifice. Others are closer up, such that one can almost feel the
cool air rushing forth, smell a primal odour, witness the teeming soup of churning water and hear the echoing
roar. Courbet’s poet friend Max Buchon put it this way:

‘Hear it roaring in its cavernous den
Like a demented tiger bounding at its step ...’61
In another (Fig. 52) the scale is provided by a figure standing on a little pier sticking out into the stream. He raises
his arm as if for some kind of invocation. Even if drowned out by the constant echoes of rushing water spilling
over stones that descend step-like to the river’s bed, one imagines him shouting into the cave to hear the echo
of his voice.The gesture recalls that from a painting Courbet made when he first discovered the Mediterranean
on a visit to his patron Alfred Bruyas at Montpellier (Fig. 53). In that more modestly-sized picture, Courbet
immodestly doffs his hat as if to hail the sea. According to JulesVallès, Courbet’s words were ‘O Sea!Your voice
is great, but it will never drown out the voice of fame as it proclaims my name to the entire world.’62

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