Fresnes (1897)

Jean-Ferdinand Monchablon: Fresnes

View of the Village of Fresnes (1895)

Jean Ferdinand Monchablon: View of the Village of Fresnes

The Old Oak (1895)

Henri-Joseph Harpignies: The Old Oak

A Stag in the Woods (ca. 1891)

Henri-Joseph Harpignies: A Stag in the Woods

Farm Landscape (1888)

Paul-Louis Martin des Amoignes: Farm Landscape

The Painter's Garden at Saint-Privé (1886)

Henri-Joseph Harpignies: The Painter's Garden at Saint-Privé

In about 1879 Harpignies retired to his property of La Trémellerie at Saint-Privé on the banks of the river Loing (in the département of the Yonne), south-east of Paris. The formal garden there became a favourite subject for the artist. [National Gallery, UK]

The Village Pond (1885)

Pierre-Emmanuel Damoye: The Village Pond

The Seine at Poissy (1884)

Ernest Meissonier: The Seine at Poissy

An Afternoon Along the Loing (1883)

Henri-Joseph Harpignies: An Afternoon Along the Loing, near Saint-Privé

Charles Euphrasie Kuwasseg (1883)

Charles Euphrasie Kuwasseg: At the River's Edge

  

Charles Euphrasie Kuwasseg: Promenade en Bateau

Le Canal Saint-Martin (1876-82)

Stanislas Lépine: Le Canal Saint-Martin

View of a Village (1882)

Henri-Joseph Harpignies: View of a Village

First Leaves (1880)

Leon Germain Pelouse: First Leaves

The Rock of Vanns (1880)

Jules Laurens: The Rock of Vanns

River Landscape (1880)

Charles Euphrasie Kuwasseg: A Capriccio River Landscape

Le Château de Chillon (1874-77)

Gustave Courbet: Le Château de Chillon

Lord Byron retells the lament of François Bonnivard, the legendary Prisoner of Chillon (1819), who was incarcerated in the dungeons of the medieval fortress from 1532 to 1536. The notorious harshness of Bonnivard’s punishment gains greater absurdity when the splendours of the castle’s natural setting are considered, and the visitor cannot but ponder upon the strange nature of the human kind. Such extremes certainly entertained the great Romantic imaginations of the late-eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Rousseau (La nouvelle Heloise, 1761), Shelley (1816), Alexandre Dumas (1832) and Victor Hugo (1839) sourced their prose and poetry from the castle’s idyllic surroundings and terrible history. Artists were equally mesmerised by Chillon and Turner (1802), Delacroix (Prisonnier de Chillon, 1835) and Courbet are the most distinguished painters to have made significant contributions to the visual heritage of the castle and its history.

As a landmark of the Romantic Spirit, Chillon was to attract Gustave Courbet towards the end of his life. Fleeing a court case in France against the partisans of the Paris Commune - with whom he was accused of calling for the pulling down of the Vendôme Column, Courbet settled in the small town of la-Tour-de-Peilz, on the shores of Lake Geneva, between Vevey and Montreux. He stayed there until his death, on 31 December 1877.

By the second half of the nineteenth century, Chillon had become an important station on the Grand Tour passage from Switzerland and into Italy. The familiarity of Chillon with Courbet’s contemporaries would have been an important element in the artist’s choice of subject. With precarious finances to manage, Courbet must have felt inclined to depict variations on this popular theme. The provenance of the present view of the Chateau de Chillon appears to confirm this suggestion as Jules Budry, the painting’s first owner and keeper of the town’s  Café du Centre, was someone with whom Courbet had a set table arrangement. It would appear that, at the artist’s death, outstanding debts from his meals at the Café were cancelled in exchange for certain paintings. These would have originated from the artist’s studio, where his close collaborator, Cherubino Pata (1827-1899), dealt with posthumous completions.

Courbet’s view of the Chateau de Chillon presents the castle at its most dramatic vantage point, entering the calm waters of Lake Geneva from the very end of a rocky promontory. The solid structure appears at once to float upon the water surface and to dominate the surrounding environs. The overall stillness conveyed in this particular work by the elements of stone/matter, water and air contribute to a vision of space and history transcending all times. [Bonhams]

Landscape with a Sunlit Stream (ca. 1877)

Charles-François Daubigny: Landscape with a Sunlit Stream

Daubigny began exhibiting his work regularly at the Salon in 1838, and by the early 1850s he had achieved considerable success as a landscape painter. Water figures prominently in his imagery—notably, in his riverscapes painted from the vantage point of his studio-boat.

This painting's flickering brushwork and lightened palette relate it to the works of the Impressionists, whose influence on Daubigny grew out of his contact with Pissarro and Monet in the 1860s and early 1870s. [Metropolitan Museum of Art]

Low Tide at Tréport (1876)

Jules Achille Nöel: Low Tide at Tréport

Gustave Courbet (1876)

 Gustave Courbet: Deer in the Snow

  

Gustave Courbet: Swiss Landscape with Flowering Apple Tree

The Farm at Saint Simon, Honfleur (1876)

Adolphe-Félix Cals: The Farm at Saint Simon, Honfleur