Landscape with Rocky Cliffs and a Waterfall

On 2 March 1872 Courbet finished a six-month sentence for his part in pulling down the Vendôme Column during the Paris Commune. That spring the Salon jury refused his submissions, so he went home to Ornans and spent the summer in the limestone country of the Jura, painting cliffs and falling water. This canvas comes out of those months. The rock is laid on with a palette knife, spread in patches rather than drawn, which was his habit whenever he painted rough ground. The following year the state ordered him to pay for rebuilding the column, and he crossed into Switzerland rather than face the bill. The painting reached Amsterdam in 1900 as a gift to the Rijksmuseum from Baroness van Lynden-van Pallandt of The Hague.