Paysage de neige

Courbet painted this as a man who could not go home. After the Paris Commune of 1871 he was held responsible for the pulling down of the Vendôme Column, served six months in prison, and in July 1873 slipped across the border into Switzerland ahead of the bill for putting the column back up. He settled at La Tour-de-Peilz on Lake Geneva. Anything sold under his name in France risked being seized, so canvases went out of the studio unsigned and were signed later on the French side, a number of them by his pupil Cherubino Pata. Snow scenes of this kind sold steadily and could be made quickly, and this one came back to his home valley at Ornans, where it hangs today. In 1877 a court in Paris fixed what he owed for the column at 323,091 francs, payable in yearly instalments. He died at La Tour-de-Peilz on 31 December that year, the day before the first one fell due.