A Brook in a Clearing (possibly "Brook, Valley of Fontcouverte; Study")

In the summer of 1862 Courbet was far from his home ground in eastern France, staying in the Saintonge country near the western coast. He spent that season painting outdoors beside a local landscapist, Louis-Augustin Auguin, and this study of a wooded brook came out of those days in the open air. You can see it was worked quickly and left as it was. The foliage is built from loose, loaded strokes of the brush, with none of the tidy finish a Salon picture would have had. Courbet later gave the canvas to Auguin, who was probably its first owner, and he showed it that winter in an exhibition he helped arrange in the town hall of Saintes.