Lot 1287 Dα

During the last years of his life, in Switzerland, where he lived in exile, Courbet was aided in numerous of his paintings by studio assistants. According to Jean Jacques Fernier the present painting was made with the help of such aids and in his catalogue raisonné of the artist's painting it is included in the section “Courbet en collaboration.”
Courbet, who was politically and socially known to be an “enfant terrible,” in 1870 made the proposal, while president of the Commission for the Protection of Museum Treasures, that the Place Vendôme Column be torn down on the grounds that it was an artistically worthless and undignified monument, which was done the next year. When in 1875 he was condemned to pay the costs of it rebuilding the column he fled to Switzerland. There he died two years later. During this short period this work was painted.
Courbet's landscapes show random sections of nature, objectively and impartially, in for him characteristic color harmony of grey, brown, green and blue.