Gustave Courbet

Lot Description Gustave Courbet (French, 1819-1877) Entrée de forêt signed 'G. Courbet' (lower left) oil on canvas 37 7/8 x 51 in. (96 x 129 cm.) Painted circa 1865. Provenance with Galerie Thannhauser, Berlin, circa 1916. von Steiger collection, Bern. Roger Lazarelli, Geneva. Anonymous sale; Galerie Bollag, 23 March 1935, lot 87. Emile Chambon, Geneva. Private collection, Switzerland. Anonymous sale; Christie's, London, 21 November 1997, lot 185. Pre-Lot Text PROPERTY FROM AN IMPORTANT EUROPEAN COLLECTION Literature A. Fontainas, 'Courbet' in l'Album d'Art Druet, 1927, vol. VI (illustrated). A. Daber, exh. cat., Courbet - Exposition du 130e anniversaire de sa naissance, au profit des 'Amis de Gustave Courbet', Paris, 1949, under no. 14. Exh. cat., Gustave Courbet 1819-1877, Philadelphia, 1959, no. 51, as: 'L'Orée de la forêt'. Exh. cat., Gustave Courbet 1819-1877, Boston, 1960, p. 83, as: 'L'orée de la forêt'. R. Fernier, La vie et l'oeuvre de Gustave Courbet, Lausanne, 1977, vol. I, p. 258, no. 477 (illustrated p. 259). P. K. Schuster, exh. cat., Courbet und Deutschland, Cologne, 1978, p. 274. P. Courthion, Tout l'oeuvre peint de Courbet, Paris, 1987, no. 500 (illustrated). Exhibited Munich, Moderne Galerie Heinrich Thannhauser, 1916, no. 16. Bern, Kunstmuseum, Gustave Courbet, 22 September - 18 November 1962, no. 39. Geneva, Galerie Krugier & Cie, Bonjour, Monsieur Courbet, November 1967, no. 9. Ravenna, Museo d'arte della città di Ravenna, Dal Romanticismo all'informale. Omaggio a Francesco Arcangeli, 19 March - 23 July 2006. View Lot Notes > This composition is characteristic of a number of landscapes painted by Courbet in the mid-1860s, inspired by the mountainous and wooded countryside of his native Franche-Comté in eastern France. The two massive beech trees in the foreground appear in various other works painted around this time, most notably in a snow-covered variant of the same scene, today in the Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh (fig. 1). Although quintessentially "realist" in its purposeful ignorance of classical compositional convention and the prominence given to the two trees, the repetition of the main motif suggests that the landscape was imagined and put together using favoured, but real elements. Courbet was primarily a landscape painter; however his aim was not to convey a sense of the picturesque, but rather to emphasize the materiality and density of his subject. As Laurence des Cars writes: 'His entire approach as a landscape painter aimed to make the reality of a site his own through a feeling of closeness to the subject; it is without equivalent in French painting of the time. In this revolution of the gaze, the technical principles that underlie composition, the use of colour, and the density of paint were turned upside down in order to convey the structure and essence of his subjects, beyond their appearance.' (exh. cat., Gustave Courbet, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2008, p. 227). Courbet viewed a landscape as a self-contained, living entity, which an artist had to know intimately to understand -- a fact taken to its extreme in his inclusion of anthropomorphic motifs in his later works in this genre. Here the two beech tree appear as two giants stepping out from the edge of the forest: the off-vertical axis of the trunks, and their angle compared to the roots create a clear sense of a human gait. The trunks become torsos, the roots feet, and the branches arms. As in so many of Courbet's landscapes, the artist has packed his composition with real visual elements, but created an overall image which conveys a vision based on his strong roots to his region. He has taken to an extreme a vision first realized in the mid 1850s with a more naturalist painting which has echoes of the Barbizon School (fig. 2), and in which a screen of vegetation dominates a small area of sky in the background. In the present work, the lack of a horizon line across most of the canvas, the upwards perspective, and the use of dark, densely applied colours, push the whole picture plane and the forest towards the viewer, again reinforcing the looming presence of the two main trees. The artist has deliberately brought the subject forward to better fragment it, arbitrarily cutting off the trunks, keeping out the sky: the overall sense is almost claustrophobic, slightly unsettling, but immensely powerful.

Gustave Courbet (French, 1819-1877) Le jardin de la Mère Toutain à Honfleur signed 'G. Courbet' (lower left) oil on canvas 17 x 24¼ in. (43.1 x 61.5 cm.) Painted circa 1859-61 Anonymous sale; Paris, Monod & Stumph, 1867, lot 45. Jules Rouff, Paris, thence by descent to Marcel Rouff, Paris, thence by descent to Frederic Rouff. Madame Roubaud, thence by descent to the present owner. Property from a French Private Collection Georges Riat, Gustave Courbet, Floury, 1906, p. 179. Charles Léger, Courbet, Paris, 1929, p. 81. Pierre Miquel, Le paysage français au XIX siècle, Maurs-la-Jolie, 1975, vol. III, p. 720. R. Fernier, La vie et l'oeuvre de Gustave Courbet, Paris, 1978, vol. II, p. 321. Rond-Point de l'Alma, Expositions des oeuvres de M. G. Courbet, 1867, no. 45, as Paysage de mer. Although not illustrated in Fernier, it is the opinion of Sarah Faunce that this work is most likely Le jardin de la Mère Toutain à Honfleur (Fernier, p. 321). This painting was executed by Courbet during a trip he made with the writer, poet and musician Alexandre Schanne in 1859 from Paris to Le Havre, where he met fellow artist Eugene Boudin. Boudin introduced Courbet to Claude Monet and it was Boudin who found a place for Courbet and Schanne to stay on the Saint Simeon farm, close to Honfleur, where M. Toutain owned an inn. It was there that Courbet executed this charming work. We are grateful to Sarah Faunce for confirming the authenticity of this painting.

Gustave Courbet (French, 1819-1877) The Beach at Trouville signed, dated and dedicated '65 Gustave Courbet à mon ami Nodler' (lower left) oil on canvas 19¼ x 25 5/8 in. (48.9 x 65.1 cm.) with the London Gallery, London. The Edward James Foundation, Worthing, West Sussex, circa 1937. Private collection, England. Anonymous sale; Christie's, New York, 27 October 1982, lot 66. Anonymous sale; Neal Auction Company, New Orleans, LA, 18 April 2009, lot 290. Acquired at the above sale by the present owner. THE PROPERTY OF AN IMPORTANT ENGLISH PRIVATE COLLECTOR Minotaure, circa 1938 (illustrated). This painting is one of a number of coastal scenes executed by Courbet at Trouville in Normandy, in the summer of 1865, and one of two such paintings dedicated to the artist's friend and patron Nodler (see also R. Fernier, La vie et l'oeuvre de Gustave Courbet, 1977, vol. 1, no. 511). Nodler also commissioned two portraits of his sons from the artist in 1866 (op. cit, nos. 540 and 541). In a letter dated 10 April 2012, J. Fernier points out the anthropomorphic nature of the rock in the foreground, stressing that this is one of the earliest instances of a device that Courbet would use throughout his later career when painting rock formations. This work is sold with a letter by Jean-Jacques Fernier dated 10 April 2012 confirming that it will be included in his supplement to the Courbet catalogue raisonné.

GUSTAVE COURBET (1819 Ornans - 1877 La Tour-de Peilz) DER STRECKENGEHER VON ORNANS Signiert unten links: G. Courbet Öl auf Leinwand. 33 x 25 cm. Gutachten Jean Jacques Fernier, 18. September 1986. Provenienz Wertheim, Berlin. - Galerie Bernheim Jeune, Paris 1908 (?). - Auktion Roger Walter, Hotel Drouot, Paris 21. Nov. 1928, Nr. 70. - Schweizer Privatbesitz. Fernier datiert dieses Gemälde um 1850. Es entstand in der Umgebung seiner Heimatstadt Ornans zu dem Zeitpunkt also, als Courbet seine ersten künstlerischen Erfolge erlebte. Trotz des kleinen Formats und des unspektakulären Sujets ist dieses Bild exemplarisch für seinen revolutionären Stil. Bemerkenswert ist dabei die Art, wie er auf egalitäre, gleichwertige Weise alle Bildelemente in einer räumlichen Ebene optisch zusammenfügt. Unabhängig vom Gegenstand und Blicktiefe verteilt er Farben und Licht auf der Leinwand und schafft - Spatel und Pinsel abwechselnd verwendend - eine gitterartige Struktur. Courbets Landschaften sind nicht realistisch im traditionellen Sinn und noch weniger Ideallandschaften. Er zoomt vielmehr einen Naturausschnitt so nah heran, dass alle Bildelemente optisch gleichzeitig erfasst werden können; der baumbestandenen Vordergund und der Felsen im Hintergrund ebenso wie der einsame Wanderer. Damit bereitet Courbet den Wandel zur modernen Landschaftsdarstellung der folgenden Generationen vor. Fernier dates this painting around 1850. It was created near his hometown Ornans at a time when Courbet experienced his first artistic successes. 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 an optical element of space. Independent from object and insight he distributes colours and light an the canvas and creates - alternately using a palette knife and brush - a lattice-like structure. Courbet's landscapes are not realistic in the traditional sense, and ideal landscapes even less so. He almostzooms unto a detail of nature to capture all elements of a picture at once: the tree-lined foreground and the rock in rear as well as the solitary wanderer. Here, Courbet prepares the transition to modern landscape Interpretation for the coming generations.

DescEN Courbet, Gustave 1819 Ornans - 1877 La Tour de Peitz - circle Portrait of a Bearded Man. Remains of former inscription bottom right. Oil on canvas. Relined. 51 x 40cm. Framed. Assessment: Fernier, Jean-Jacques, Institut Gustave Courbet, Ornans from May 18, 2011 with the date of the work from year 1842 - 45.