Lot Essay
This large, fiercely dramatic landscape by Gustave Courbet, with its startling blend of Romantic imagery and sweepingly bold paint handling is virtually unknown, having been shown publicly only once when it was sold in 1875 following the death of the Duc de Bojano, a wealthy Second Empire Banker. The only authors who have noted The Coup de Vent, Fernier and Courthion, probably never saw the painting itself but dated it 1856 without explanation. Nonetheless, it seems far more likely that Le Coup de Vent was actually painted during the mid- or late 1860s.
Le Coup de Vent depicts a line of strong, storm-tossed trees that follow one bank of a rocky gorge deep into the heart of the painting; on the opposite edge of the gorge, which opens out into the viewer's space, smaller trees and shrubs cover a lower, less abrupt embankment. A heavy, darkening sky moves into the landscape from the upper left, pushing lighter streaks of sunstruck clouds before it over the gorge and a distant mountain chain. The landscape combines the stark limestone outcropping characteristic of Courbet's many Jura landscapes with a basic structure that recalls the rocky plateaus scattered across the Gorge d'Apremont in the Forest of Fontainbleau (indeed R. Fernier subtitled the painting Fort de Fontainebleau). Painted on a coarse, unprimed linen canvas that was prepared with only an imprimatura layer of a dark pigment, the Coup de Vent displays a rugged, broken paint surface that has never been disturbed by a lining. Across the foreground and along the right-hand side, Courbet swept drying, tacky paint onto the canvas with bold arching strokes of a large palette knife that can be traced in the trail left by the knife point. Rough canvas caught and broke the paint streaks into myriad touches and clumps. Elsewhere, Courbet daubed and pulled and smoothed more fluid pigments into leaves, tree limbs, and drawn-out trails of clouds, using brushes as well as palette knifes.
Le Coup de Vent first entered the historical record as L'Ouragan (Hurricane) in a sale of large paintings at the Htel Drouot in April of 1875. Prominently featured in the catalogue title and advertising for the sale were '3 Large Panels and a Ceiling by J. F. Millet,' and these works, far better documented than the Courbet painting, may well cast an informative light on the probable circumstances surrounding the creation of Le Coup de Vent (or L'Ouragan). The sale followed the death of a Monsieur Thomas, a financier from Colmar in the Vosges region of eastern France who used the title Duc de Bojano; and the Millet paintings had been decorations in the dining room of a grand home Thomas built on the boulevard Beaujon (the site of the former "Jardin Beaujon" recorded in a Cabat painting, lot # of this sale, later renamed the boulevard Haussman) during the mid-1860s. Thomas' architect was Alfred Feydeau, a long-time friend of Millet, and it was Feydeau who had prevailed upon his client to foregoe the original intention of hiring Faustin Besson (a fashionable decorator who specialized in neo-eighteenth-century imagery) and entrust the commission to Millet. Thomas had very specific expectations for the decorations--that they represent the Four Seasons and feature mythological figures--and the architect required Millet to paint the large works on canvases that could be installed into Feydeau's 'Louis XIV' woodwork for the room. Millet worked on his pictures throughout 1864-65, originally experimenting with, but then abandoning, an encaustic paint technique that he hoped would give the texture and blanched quality of old master frescoes. The final panels, now dispersed, of L'Amour, Crs, and Daphnis and Chlo need not concern us here beyond the acknowledgment that these strikingly beautiful works are quite unlike anything else in Millet's oeuvre, as Correggio-like as they are Millet-esque!
It seems very likely that Le Coup de Vent also came into being as a decorative project for Thomas, perhaps with as many stipulations as to style and imagery as Millet had faced--although at present there is no known documentation for such a commission. The scale of Courbet's picture and a composition which is meant to be seen from slightly below are consistent with decorative requirements. And the rather unusual coloring of Le Coup de Vent, which subsumes many of Courbet's favored color effects from his mid-1860s seascapes and Jura mountain scenes into an overall pink-beige and grey-green schema, is very eighteenth century, reminiscent of Boucher's large decorative works such as Le moulin de Charenton (Toledo Museum of Art). Like Millet, Courbet would presumably have been expected to produce a painting that would harmonize with the pale woodwork of another room in the Thomas home.
There is a conflicting view of the origins and intentions behind Le Coup de Vent, however, that must be acknowledged when such an extraordinary painting is in question. Jean-Jacques Fernier, who saw the painting in January of this year, believes the date of 1856 assigned by his father to Le Coup de Vent may reflect lost documentation from the 1875 sale or information to which the Durand-Ruel firm was privy. And accepting that date, he has hypothesized that the painting may represent Courbet's anger toward the Second Empire government which had recently exiled his close friend and confidant, Max Buchon. As Fernier explains in a letter to Christie's, Courbet wove personal significance into many of his major paintings and it would have been typical of the artist to have intended Le Coup de Vent as a denunciation of the Second Empire through the ancient adage 'Who sows the wind, will reap the storm.'
After the Bojano sale Le Coup de Vent passed to the Durand-Ruel gallery whose New York offices sold it in 1891 to James J. Hill, a wealthy Minnesota railroad baron whose new home in Saint Paul included a specially designed picture gallery that easily absorbed large paintings by Courbet, Corot, Millet and others (fig. 1). Since 1891, the painting has descended within the Hill family and has not been publicly exhibited.
We are grateful to Alexandra R. Murphy for her assistance in preparing this catalogue entry.
(fig. 2) Hill House Gallery, looking east, about 1922, showing Courbet's Coup de Vent hanging over the fireplace. (photo: Minneapolis Historical Society)
Le Coup de Vent depicts a line of strong, storm-tossed trees that follow one bank of a rocky gorge deep into the heart of the painting; on the opposite edge of the gorge, which opens out into the viewer's space, smaller trees and shrubs cover a lower, less abrupt embankment. A heavy, darkening sky moves into the landscape from the upper left, pushing lighter streaks of sunstruck clouds before it over the gorge and a distant mountain chain. The landscape combines the stark limestone outcropping characteristic of Courbet's many Jura landscapes with a basic structure that recalls the rocky plateaus scattered across the Gorge d'Apremont in the Forest of Fontainbleau (indeed R. Fernier subtitled the painting Fort de Fontainebleau). Painted on a coarse, unprimed linen canvas that was prepared with only an imprimatura layer of a dark pigment, the Coup de Vent displays a rugged, broken paint surface that has never been disturbed by a lining. Across the foreground and along the right-hand side, Courbet swept drying, tacky paint onto the canvas with bold arching strokes of a large palette knife that can be traced in the trail left by the knife point. Rough canvas caught and broke the paint streaks into myriad touches and clumps. Elsewhere, Courbet daubed and pulled and smoothed more fluid pigments into leaves, tree limbs, and drawn-out trails of clouds, using brushes as well as palette knifes.
Le Coup de Vent first entered the historical record as L'Ouragan (Hurricane) in a sale of large paintings at the Htel Drouot in April of 1875. Prominently featured in the catalogue title and advertising for the sale were '3 Large Panels and a Ceiling by J. F. Millet,' and these works, far better documented than the Courbet painting, may well cast an informative light on the probable circumstances surrounding the creation of Le Coup de Vent (or L'Ouragan). The sale followed the death of a Monsieur Thomas, a financier from Colmar in the Vosges region of eastern France who used the title Duc de Bojano; and the Millet paintings had been decorations in the dining room of a grand home Thomas built on the boulevard Beaujon (the site of the former "Jardin Beaujon" recorded in a Cabat painting, lot # of this sale, later renamed the boulevard Haussman) during the mid-1860s. Thomas' architect was Alfred Feydeau, a long-time friend of Millet, and it was Feydeau who had prevailed upon his client to foregoe the original intention of hiring Faustin Besson (a fashionable decorator who specialized in neo-eighteenth-century imagery) and entrust the commission to Millet. Thomas had very specific expectations for the decorations--that they represent the Four Seasons and feature mythological figures--and the architect required Millet to paint the large works on canvases that could be installed into Feydeau's 'Louis XIV' woodwork for the room. Millet worked on his pictures throughout 1864-65, originally experimenting with, but then abandoning, an encaustic paint technique that he hoped would give the texture and blanched quality of old master frescoes. The final panels, now dispersed, of L'Amour, Crs, and Daphnis and Chlo need not concern us here beyond the acknowledgment that these strikingly beautiful works are quite unlike anything else in Millet's oeuvre, as Correggio-like as they are Millet-esque!
It seems very likely that Le Coup de Vent also came into being as a decorative project for Thomas, perhaps with as many stipulations as to style and imagery as Millet had faced--although at present there is no known documentation for such a commission. The scale of Courbet's picture and a composition which is meant to be seen from slightly below are consistent with decorative requirements. And the rather unusual coloring of Le Coup de Vent, which subsumes many of Courbet's favored color effects from his mid-1860s seascapes and Jura mountain scenes into an overall pink-beige and grey-green schema, is very eighteenth century, reminiscent of Boucher's large decorative works such as Le moulin de Charenton (Toledo Museum of Art). Like Millet, Courbet would presumably have been expected to produce a painting that would harmonize with the pale woodwork of another room in the Thomas home.
There is a conflicting view of the origins and intentions behind Le Coup de Vent, however, that must be acknowledged when such an extraordinary painting is in question. Jean-Jacques Fernier, who saw the painting in January of this year, believes the date of 1856 assigned by his father to Le Coup de Vent may reflect lost documentation from the 1875 sale or information to which the Durand-Ruel firm was privy. And accepting that date, he has hypothesized that the painting may represent Courbet's anger toward the Second Empire government which had recently exiled his close friend and confidant, Max Buchon. As Fernier explains in a letter to Christie's, Courbet wove personal significance into many of his major paintings and it would have been typical of the artist to have intended Le Coup de Vent as a denunciation of the Second Empire through the ancient adage 'Who sows the wind, will reap the storm.'
After the Bojano sale Le Coup de Vent passed to the Durand-Ruel gallery whose New York offices sold it in 1891 to James J. Hill, a wealthy Minnesota railroad baron whose new home in Saint Paul included a specially designed picture gallery that easily absorbed large paintings by Courbet, Corot, Millet and others (fig. 1). Since 1891, the painting has descended within the Hill family and has not been publicly exhibited.
We are grateful to Alexandra R. Murphy for her assistance in preparing this catalogue entry.
(fig. 2) Hill House Gallery, looking east, about 1922, showing Courbet's Coup de Vent hanging over the fireplace. (photo: Minneapolis Historical Society)