Sunset on Lake Geneva

The cliffs on the left, across the water, are the Mémises, above Évian. That shore is France. Courbet painted this in 1874 from the Swiss side of Lake Geneva. In May 1873 the French parliament had voted to rebuild the Vendôme column in Paris, toppled under the Commune, at his expense, and that July he crossed into Switzerland rather than wait for the bill. The rock face across the lake also recalled the limestone cliffs of the Franche-Comté, the hill country around his home town of Ornans, which he had painted many times. He set the horizon very low, so the sky, lit by the setting sun, fills most of the canvas, and much of the lake was worked with the palette knife. Out on the water sits a boat with two slanting lateen sails, the rig of the old working barges of the lake.