An artwork on Galleree from Cleveland Museum of Art.
About the artwork
Panoramic View of the Alps, Les Dents du Midi1877
Gustave Courbet
Born into a wealthy farmer's family, Courbet began his training in 1831 at the Petit Séminaire in Ornans where, beginning in 1833, he studied under "le père Baud," who had been a pupil of Gros (q.v.). He was befriended by poet Max Buchon, who would later write the first article on Courbet, claiming that he was the artist for the people. In 1837, hoping that Gustave would become a lawyer, his father sent him to the Collège Royal in Besançon. Despite his father's ambitions, Courbet began to study art at the academy there with Charles-Antoine Flageoulot (1774-1840), a former student of David (q.v.). By 1839 Courbet had moved to Paris to pursue a career in art. He refrained from entering the École des Beaux-Arts, studying instead briefly with Charles de Steuben (1788-1856) and preferring to learn how to paint by copying the works of the Old Masters in the museums. Courbet also wanted to work after life models and enrolled at the Académie Suisse. He began to submit paintings to the Salon, the majority of which were rejected. In 1846-47 Courbet traveled to the Netherlands where he studied the works of Rembrandt and Hals. The following year ten of his paintings were shown at the Salon, and together with his friends Baudelaire, Champfleury, and Buchon he became labeled a "realist." Courbet's paintings shown at the 1851 Salon-Stonebreakers (1849, formerly Dresden Gemäldegalerie, destroyed during World War II), Peasants of Flagey (1850-55, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Besançon), and The Burial at Ornans (1849-50, Musée d'Orsay, Paris)-elicited criticism. Because Courbet represented the peasants as he saw them, without ennobling or idealizing them, his works met with disapproval. Moreover, these representations of peasants appeared at a time when the upper classes felt threatened by social unrest and by the instability of the republic. In 1855 Courbet financed an independent Pavillon du Réalisme near the Universal Exposition, where he showed his Painter's Studio (1854-55, Musée d'Orsay, Paris). He began to travel extensively, including visits to Gent, Brussels, Antwerp, Bruges, Cologne, Mainz, and Strasbourg. He returned to Germany in 1858, and while in Frankfurt, he began to paint the stag hunts he witnessed. The following year he visited the Normandy coast, painting seascapes, some of which became almost abstractions. Courbet turned to still lifes in 1862-63 when visiting the Saintonge area, yet he still continued to create landscapes and portraits. By 1870 he was offered the Legion of Honor but refused it because of his opposition to the imperial government. During the Paris Commune from March to May 1871, Courbet became an active member of the government. As chairman of the Commission for the Protection of the Artistic Monuments of Paris, he suggested the Vendôme Column be dismantled because it was an imperial symbol. The Commune decided instead to topple the column. When the Commune was defeated, Courbet was held responsible for this act of vandalism and was jailed for six months. In 1873 the government decided to rebuild the column at Courbet's expense. Unable to pay and fearful of being arrested, Courbet moved to Switzerland, where he spent the rest of his life in exile.
Courbet was still working on this large landscape, intended for the Paris Universal Exposition of 1879, when he died in December 1877. He painted it during his exile in Switzerland, where he had fled after being condemned for subversive activities in the Paris Commune of 1871. The view looks south over Lake Geneva toward the mountains called Les Dents du Midi. While some areas are heavily worked with a palette knife, the lower right remains unfinished.
This late, unfinished painting reveals some of Courbet's techniques. At the top of the mountains you can see how different brushstrokes and thickly applied paint were used to differentiate the texture of the clouds from the snow.
oil on fabric
Framed: 172 x 230 x 8.5 cm (67 11/16 x 90 9/16 x 3 3/8 in.); Unframed: 151.2 x 210.2 cm (59 1/2 x 82 3/4 in.)
John L. Severance Fund and various donors by exchange
In the waning light of a December evening in 1877, a sense of urgency hung in the air as Gustave Courbet stood before an expansive canvas, his brush moving with all the fervor of a man seeking freedom. This was no ordinary painting; it was a large landscape destined for the prestigious Paris Universal Exposition of 1879. Yet, time slipped through his fingers as he grappled with his fate—an exile in the serene embrace of Switzerland, far from the tumult of Paris.
The weight of his past loomed heavily over him. Just six years earlier, he had been swept into a wave of revolutionary fervor—the Paris Commune of 1871—that had demanded change at a great cost. Those very events had branded him a subversive, forcing him to flee to the tranquil shores of Lake Geneva. Here, amidst the enveloping mountains of Les Dents du Midi that loomed majestically before him, he sought solace in nature, and perhaps in art itself, as a means of expression and protest.
As he painted, the landscape unfolded with a vividness that mirrored his inner turmoil. Bold strokes danced over the canvas, a flurry of movement captured through the textured strokes of his palette knife. But in the lower right corner, a stark reminder of his mortality lingered—an unfinished section, a silent testament to dreams and ambitions cut short.
In this captivating half-finished work, Courbet immortalizes not only the breathtaking beauty of the Swiss landscape but also his own struggle for an artistic voice amid the chaos of exile. Each brushstroke captured the spirit of resilience, a portrait of a man who, even in confinement, dared to dream aloud in colors that spoke of hope, defiance, and unyielding passion for the world around him. As he looked over Lake Geneva one last time, Courbet intertwined his legacy with the very mountains that would forever hold his story.
About the artist
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