The Breme Stream

The place is the Puits-Noir, a dark, narrow gorge near Ornans in eastern France where the little Brème stream runs under dense trees. It was Courbet's home country, and he knew this spot intimately. He painted it more than 15 times through the 1860s. We remember Courbet for scandal, for the huge realist canvases that outraged Paris and for his politics during the Commune, but landscape was in fact most of what he did, close to two-thirds of his output. Here there are no people and no anecdote, only water, rock, and shade. He built the deep greens and blacks partly with a palette knife, scraping paint on in slabs, a rough handling that annoyed critics used to a smooth finish.