Canvas. 16⅛ × 12⅞ inches Painted probably after 1860
Gustave Courbet (1819-1877)
La Grotte de la Loue
Gift of Charles L. Lindemann
Below a three-hundred-foot perpendicular cliff in the Jura mountains, the Loue River issues in cascades from a cavernous grotto and flows through Courbet’s native town, Ornans, to join the Doubs and ultimately swell the Saône. Courbet, who loved his native scenery, does not choose to paint the picturesque aspects of this fine scene. Instead he looks with new intensity at nature and places his unprecedented, forthright vision almost brutally on canvas. Having little patience with refinements of draftsmanship, he seems to have used the thick body of his generously applied paint to counterfeit reality in his picture. While light and shade are present, Courbet is unconventional in his modeling of the great rocks. The eye is often uncertain of the surfaces of these rocks; their directions in space are ill-defined and one form is not connected with another. But viewing the work broadly, we are conscious of the painter’s power. How solidly the man spearing a fish stands before the opening of the spacious cavern and how substantially the huge masses of rock swell forward from the darkness! With his powerful, unorthodox style, Courbet broke radically with traditional modes of painting “to transcribe,” as he said, “the customs, ideas, the appearances,” of his time, “in a word, to create a living art.”
Canvas. 38¾ × 51⅜ inches Painted c. 1865
Henri Fantin-Latour (1836-1904)
Still Life
Chester Dale Collection
A careful rendering of objects selected for their varied colors, shapes, and textures and neatly arranged on a table top is a perfect vehicle for the display of Fantin-Latour’s technical facility. A companion of artists with such diverse tastes as Ingres, Delacroix, Corot, Courbet, and Whistler, he created a delicate art which appealed to all. The objects in this still life have been skillfully placed on the table to establish a self-contained pictorial composition. The book is turned at an angle to lead the eye back towards the vase of flowers, which forms a climax for the picture. The bald shape of the book is artfully interrupted by the silhouette of the dainty cup; and the tray, overlapping the table edge, also relieves the monotony of too straight a line. For the same reason the fruits overlap the tray and basket. Further variety is given by the careful distinction of various textures. Like a Dutch Old Master, Fantin-Latour has included a peeled orange to let him display his cleverness in showing textural variety, and he has dwelt lovingly on the petals of the flowers. Such a picture conservatively retains much of the academic style; it was composed on the table top before it was ever painted, and it should be distinguished from the work of Fantin-Latour’s more progressive friends.
Canvas. 24⅜ × 29½ inches Dated 1866