Lot 1518 Rα

Fernier dates this painting to around 1850. It was created near his hometown Ornans at a time when Courbet experienced his first artistic success. In spite of the small size and the unspectacular subject, this work is exemplary in its revolutionary style. Remarkable is the manner in which he combined all elements of a painting in an egalitarian, equal way to establish a visually unified space. Independent from object and insight he distributes colours and light on the canvas and creates - alternately using a palette knife and a brush - a lattice-like structure. Courbet's landscapes are not realistic in the traditional sense, and ideal landscapes even less so. He almost zooms onto a detail of nature to capture all elements of a picture at once: the tree-lined foreground and the rock at the rear as well as the solitary wanderer. Here, Courbet prepares the transition to modern landscape painting for the next generations.