Page 51 - Courbet

a kind of knowledge and experience of places that comes with familiarity, with physical intimacy even if self-
centred and with love. It means that when faced with the great mysteries of evolution and the languages of
nature, he responds to them concretely. He has an emotional intelligence in art.

Whether apocryphal or not, the anecdote about Courbet addressing the sea bears witness to his reputation
for having an indomitable ego, which gave rise to many caricatures (Fig. 54). He eventually acquired such
an outsized image that following the defeat of the Paris Commune, in which he actively participated, he was
accused of single-handedly engineering the destruction of theVendôme Column, the Napoleonic symbolism of
which was deemed an affront to the Commune’s ideal of democratic government. He was found guilty and sent
to prison. When following his release he was saddled with an enormous fine, he took refuge in Switzerland.
He settled at La-Tour-de-Peilz, near Vevey, among the natural splendours near Lake Geneva, across which
one could see the Alps where Switzerland meets France. On one side are the Dents du Midi, which is part
of the stately Mont Blanc massif on the French side.The spectacle of nature continued to be both a source of
sustenance and a challenge. In Switzerland, as if rising to the occasion, he made two large panoramas of the
mountain range (Fig. 55).67 There, too, the dialogue exists. He conquers the peaks through art, using a wide
canvas to accommodate them, evoking France, his nearby but inaccessible home and the place of comfort for
which he yearned.

If Courbet was raising his voice to challenge the sound of the Loue waters, he was also engaged in a challenge
to Mother Nature herself.The orifice leading into darkness and the mystery of nature’s creative forces certainly
echoes The Origin of the World.Yet it is too easy to see the cave as simply a vaginal form. One must also consider
the water – the life-giving force as in The Source – that pours out from it. Courbet has translated that force
into pigment. In his painting the materiality of the world exudes life. Moss seems to grow under our very eyes
on the slippery stone.There is a living, felt, vibrant and immanent vitality – one that touches human feelings,
which are moved somehow from within the ostensible thickness of the painting’s surface. This is achieved, it
seems magically, by the painter’s tools.

I mean tools, not just the brush, because there is more than just the brush. There is especially the trowel-like
palette knife, which wields paint like mortar, a construction material, and which leaves behind the traces of
its brute roughness. Courbet was famous for his skilful use of it (Fig. 56). Through it, his gestures imitate
the external forces of nature that have carved and compiled this ominous scene.68 He himself commented
that the brush was useless when trying to represent ‘rocks that have been eroded by weather and rain, and

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