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Lot Essay
Courbet painted a series of winter landscapes in Ornans during 1873. The changing seasons provided Courbet with a wide and diverse range of subjects for his paintings throughout his career and his images of Ornans at winter time are among his most memorable. Le chasseur d'eau is one of the last of the winter scenes he was able to paint in Ornans before his exile.
Set along the banks of what is likely to be the Loue river, Le chasseur d'eau evokes the crystalline starkness of winter. Courbet applied paint directly to the surface of the canvas with the palette knife and thereby captured the texture and luminosity of the snow and ice. According to Hlne Toussaint, "The new mode of vision, in which shadows are given the iridescence of bright colors, is one which later fascinated the Impressionists" (H. Toussaint, Gustave Courbet, exh. cat., Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1978, p. 175). The forbidding terrain is populated by barren trees and the only human element is the solitary hunter crouching in the lower left. The diminutive size of the figure, barely visible behind the large tree in the foreground, underscores nature's dominance over man which was a central theme of many of Courbet's landscape paintings.
The winter scenes that Courbet executed during the final years of his life are usually stark and desolate in mood. The snow-covered trees spread their branches like serpentine claws, and the frozen ground never recalls the glistening, sunlit terrain of his earlier winter scenes. When Courbet painted the present work in 1873, he had been imprisoned in Ste. Plagie for his involvement in the toppling of the Vendme Column and he was about to leave France, never to return, for exile in Switzerland. Le Chasseur d'Eau thus may be seen as representing Courbet's isolation at the end of his life, combined with his now nihilistic view of the future.
This painting originally belonged to Mr. and Mrs. Harry O. Havemeyer, whose discerning taste and the advice they received from their good friend, the American painter, Mary Cassatt, resulted in one of the greatest private collections of Courbets ever assembled.
Set along the banks of what is likely to be the Loue river, Le chasseur d'eau evokes the crystalline starkness of winter. Courbet applied paint directly to the surface of the canvas with the palette knife and thereby captured the texture and luminosity of the snow and ice. According to Hlne Toussaint, "The new mode of vision, in which shadows are given the iridescence of bright colors, is one which later fascinated the Impressionists" (H. Toussaint, Gustave Courbet, exh. cat., Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1978, p. 175). The forbidding terrain is populated by barren trees and the only human element is the solitary hunter crouching in the lower left. The diminutive size of the figure, barely visible behind the large tree in the foreground, underscores nature's dominance over man which was a central theme of many of Courbet's landscape paintings.
The winter scenes that Courbet executed during the final years of his life are usually stark and desolate in mood. The snow-covered trees spread their branches like serpentine claws, and the frozen ground never recalls the glistening, sunlit terrain of his earlier winter scenes. When Courbet painted the present work in 1873, he had been imprisoned in Ste. Plagie for his involvement in the toppling of the Vendme Column and he was about to leave France, never to return, for exile in Switzerland. Le Chasseur d'Eau thus may be seen as representing Courbet's isolation at the end of his life, combined with his now nihilistic view of the future.
This painting originally belonged to Mr. and Mrs. Harry O. Havemeyer, whose discerning taste and the advice they received from their good friend, the American painter, Mary Cassatt, resulted in one of the greatest private collections of Courbets ever assembled.