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拍品专文
Although perhaps best-known and most notorious for his enormous, public figural paintings, Gustave Courbet was throughout his long career first and foremost a landscape painter. In the preface to the catalogue for the posthumous Courbet exhibition held at the École des Beaux-Arts in 1882, Jules Castagnary stated, ‘[Courbet] discovered virgin territory where no one had yet to set foot, aspects and forms of landscape of which one could say were unknown before him. He climbed up to the free heights where the lungs expanded; he plunged into mysterious dens, he was curious about unnamed places, unknown retreats’.
Almost three-quarters of the artist’s oeuvre are landscapes. Courbet’s intimate knowledge of the landscape in and around his native Ornans in the Franche-Comté came from his meanderings through the forest and streams and from his hunting expeditions in the area. He understood the need to understand the countryside and wrote ‘To paint a landscape you have to know it. I know my country. I paint it!’
Courbet was at the same time an old master and a key figure in modernism. He was deeply rooted in artistic tradition and technique, and was particularly drawn to the work of Delacroix, Géricault, Prud’hon and the Dutch masters, while at the same time being violently opposed to tradition. Courbet’s art defies definition, but above all things it must be considered as the very beginning of 'modern' painting. Picasso, Cézanne and Monet all saw Courbet’s work in exhibitions in 1855, 1867 and 1882, and the impact of his landscapes on avant-garde painting practices extend well into the 20th century. Maier-Graefe regarded Courbet as the father of modern painting not only in France but also across Europe as well.
Courbet's landscapes are sensually perceived manifestations of his idea of the vitality and dynamism of the landscape itself. This is demonstrated through the materiality of the actual painting - just as Courbet's relationship with the land is physical, so is the process of transferring that vision onto canvas. Courbet used dark grounds to prime his canvas, learned from the Dutch Old Masters in the Louvre, and built his landscapes from dark to light, bringing the painting to life the same way sunlight brightens the greens of the forest from almost black, to emerald, to chartreuse. Throughout his career, Courbet used brushes, knives, sometimes rags and even his fingers to recreate natural processes that had taken millennia to evolve. This juxtaposition of the use of a completely modern technique to celebrate the pace of glacial time is quintessential Courbet. The artist’s paint handling is enormously complex and carefully considered, belying the overall impression of spontaneity and freshness.
In many of Courbet's landscapes, including the present work, the artist found that nature was so dramatic in its own right there was little need for figures. The rock formations and autumnal trees along the small waterfall and stream are more alive and dynamic than any figure. The land itself has a physiognomy, like the features of a sitter's face, and Courbet has presented the viewer with a lovingly painted portrait of the strange beauty of his childhood land.
Almost three-quarters of the artist’s oeuvre are landscapes. Courbet’s intimate knowledge of the landscape in and around his native Ornans in the Franche-Comté came from his meanderings through the forest and streams and from his hunting expeditions in the area. He understood the need to understand the countryside and wrote ‘To paint a landscape you have to know it. I know my country. I paint it!’
Courbet was at the same time an old master and a key figure in modernism. He was deeply rooted in artistic tradition and technique, and was particularly drawn to the work of Delacroix, Géricault, Prud’hon and the Dutch masters, while at the same time being violently opposed to tradition. Courbet’s art defies definition, but above all things it must be considered as the very beginning of 'modern' painting. Picasso, Cézanne and Monet all saw Courbet’s work in exhibitions in 1855, 1867 and 1882, and the impact of his landscapes on avant-garde painting practices extend well into the 20th century. Maier-Graefe regarded Courbet as the father of modern painting not only in France but also across Europe as well.
Courbet's landscapes are sensually perceived manifestations of his idea of the vitality and dynamism of the landscape itself. This is demonstrated through the materiality of the actual painting - just as Courbet's relationship with the land is physical, so is the process of transferring that vision onto canvas. Courbet used dark grounds to prime his canvas, learned from the Dutch Old Masters in the Louvre, and built his landscapes from dark to light, bringing the painting to life the same way sunlight brightens the greens of the forest from almost black, to emerald, to chartreuse. Throughout his career, Courbet used brushes, knives, sometimes rags and even his fingers to recreate natural processes that had taken millennia to evolve. This juxtaposition of the use of a completely modern technique to celebrate the pace of glacial time is quintessential Courbet. The artist’s paint handling is enormously complex and carefully considered, belying the overall impression of spontaneity and freshness.
In many of Courbet's landscapes, including the present work, the artist found that nature was so dramatic in its own right there was little need for figures. The rock formations and autumnal trees along the small waterfall and stream are more alive and dynamic than any figure. The land itself has a physiognomy, like the features of a sitter's face, and Courbet has presented the viewer with a lovingly painted portrait of the strange beauty of his childhood land.