Sunset, Vevey, Switzerland

In February 1873 a Cincinnati judge, George Hoadly, asked Moncure Conway, an American preacher in London and a friend of Courbet's, to get him a painting from the artist. Hoadly admired Courbet's radical politics, which were about to cost the painter his country. During the Paris Commune of 1871 insurgents had pulled down the Napoleonic column in the Place Vendôme, and Courbet, a leading figure in the uprising, was held responsible. After six months in prison he was ordered to pay for rebuilding it, a sum he could never raise, and in July 1873 he settled in exile just outside Vevey, on Lake Geneva. When Conway visited the studio in 1874, he picked this sunset over the lake and found the new paintings powerful but sombre. Hoadly later became governor of Ohio, and in 1887 he gave the canvas to the Cincinnati Art Museum.