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GUSTAVE COURBET

Deer Haven on the Streamof Plaisir-Fontaine, Doubs/
Las Remise de chevreuils au ruisseau de Plaisir-Fontaine
Oil on reused canvas (1866)
174cm X 209cm/68'/2in X 821/4 in

Gustave Courbet emerged as a force in modem painting around the time of the revolution of 1848.He came from a landowning peasant background in the Jura, the French province close to the Swiss alps, in south-east France. Courbet's father owned land and vineyards scattered on the plateau of Flagey, and property in the towns of Ornans and Flagey. The Flagey farmhouse was simple and unpretentious, while their townhouse was a grander, bourgeois establishment. Courbet's first major canvas, the Burial at Ornans (1849-1850),showed his father in his bourgeois clothes and role, while in Peasants of Flagey Returning from the Fair (1850-1855) he appears in a peasant's smock and stovepipe hat. Thus, personal experience placed Courbet in a strong position to portray the contradictions and divisions of social class in rural France, because his own family was moving upward socially.

The power of Courbet's direct and uncompromising subjects - unidealized representations on a monumental scale of ordinary rather than heroic figures - was apparent from their problematic reception in the Salon exhibitions. Having gained a second class gold medal at the Salon of 1849 with his After Dinner at Ornans. Courbet was automatically exempt from thenecessity of submitting his works to the Salon jury without this exemption, it is doubtful that his major canvases following After Dinner, a relatively traditional subject, would have gained acceptance.

Courbet's Realism took its inspiration from the works of the great seventeenth century masters, such as Rembrandt (1606-1669) and the Dutch, whose work he saw on a visit there in August 1846- The Spaniards Velazquez (1599-1660) and Zurbaran (1598-1664), and Italians Guercino (1591-1666) and Caravaggio (1573-1610) were vital to his development in the 1840s. He also looked at the French seventeenth century realists, the Le Nain brothers, whose work had been rescued from obscurity by the critic Champfleury, a friend who also championed Courbet's painting. Works by the Le Nain brothers were brought to light from the Louvre cellars in 1848, at a time when their depictions of working people had pertinent appeal for radical French artists. Courbet combined these sources with an appreciation of simple, popular images, like those of the crude woodblock color prints, which were widely distributed throughout France. He sought to unite the methods of the Old Master realists with the simple flat compositions of popular prints, to bring a new directness to his art.

Although, like most of the Old Masters to whom he turned, Courbet loaded his shadows, painting them thickly and darkly, his technique was essentially based on the tradition of chiaroscuro. He worked from dark to light, seeing himself. as he remarked, as the equivalent of the sun lighting up a dark landscape. With only a few exceptions in his later landscapes, his shadows were usually filled with the browns of the studio setting in which even his outdoor studies were normally completed. He used the problematic, non-drying color, bitumen. In his early years, this was often as a result of financial necessity because bitumen was a cheap color. Courbet's work exhibits a powerful combination of Rembrandtesque chiaroscuro with texturally evocative paint handling. Instead of adopting the conventional, smooth academic method for creating an illusion of reality, his application of colors actually imitates natural textures.

Courbet did not always work on a dark ground, building up to the lights. He often bought ready made, white or tinted primed canvases in standard sizes, and adjusted them to suit his needs. Thus in Seascape at Palavas (1854) a white commercial ground was covered by the artist with an opaque red earth ground, before he began to paint his subject. In other works, like the Flagey Oak (1864). a white ground has been overlaid with a transparent coat of warm brown paint, to give depth to shadows and a color harmony to the picture.

Allev of Chestnut Trees atCelle-St.Cloud (1867) by Alfred Sisley was influenced by Courbet's forest landscapes Sisleychose a comparable darks setting and deer motif, but with fewer contrasts of light and shade. Sisley's work hasa deeper sense of space but the recession created by the path is ambiguous. Unlike Courbet, Sisley uses brushwork with less textural differentiation resulting in a thinner paint layer. The blue of the sky, with much white added , was worked over the greens of the tree foliage.

Works like this finally gained Courbet general acclaim among public and critics in France. Contemporary critics of Impressionism commonly saw Courbet as a direct precursor of the new style, because of his commitment to naturalism. However, a perceptive critic. Henry Houssaye, noted in 1882 that, since Courbet used a good amount of chiaroscuro in his painting, he could not really be heralded as a precursor of Impressionism. In opposition to Courbet's approach, the Impressionists avoided extreme contrasts of light and shade. Thus Houssaye was the first critic to define Impressionism in terms of technique rather than purely on stylistic grounds. Courbet built up his painting from dark to light, combining studio work with painting out of doors, in front of his subject.

In Deer Haven, which was executed over a previous painting, the ground is no longer visible. However. X-rays of the picture indicate that Courbet applied a thick new ground which obliterated the earlier composition. This second ground probably contained lead white as it is impervious to the X-rays. The present paint layer of Deer Haven is covering and. in general, opaque. Courbet's surfaces are in fact deceptive. At a distance they give an appearance of rugged masonry as a result of the broken overworking of colors. Closer inspection, however, shows the superb delicacy of the artist's handling, where thin layers of brushed or knife applied color give an effect of textural solidity, without excessive bulk.

Courbet used a variety of unconventional methods to create the textural variations in his paintings. He is said to have. on occasions, even added sand to his colors to give an earthy texture. His techniques in Deer Haven are no less ingenious. The landscape itself, a well-known spot near Ornans. was mainly painted outdoors, while the deer were added in handling, where thin layers of brushed or knife.

Courbet's Paris studio during the winter of 1865-1866, when he hired some deer to 'sit' for him. He is also known to have worked from dead deer. Not surprisingly, the landscape and deer are handled quite differently. He used deft touches with palette or painting knife to give substance to rocks, tree trunks and some river side foliage. The bulk of the foliage is handle with a stiff brush, indicating the individual leaves with precision. Less distinct foliage in the background and top right are applied with color on a rag or sponge, dabbed on to give a feathery effect which contrasts with the more solid handling of brushed foliage and knife work. Finally, the brushwork used on the fur of the deer contrasts with the more vigorous rendering elsewhere. The treatment of the deer is very delicate, and the raised brushmarks left by the hog's hair brush literally recreate thetexture of fur. The resulting contrast makes the deer stand out. almost like cardboard cutouts.This was doubtless exaggerated by their being added later.

Courbet painted repeated versions of this theme, which won him enormous acclaim at the Salon of 1866. It brought him. for the first time, widespread acknowledgement for his talent, which had previously been treated with general hostility because of his controversial subject matter. Despite Courbet's importance as an example to the younger artists, his essentially traditional chiaroscuro browns meant that they reacted against his handling of light and shade in the later 1860s.

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