The Mill at the Loue

The Loue is the river of Courbet's home country, the Franche-Comte in eastern France, and he painted its valley, water and cliffs over and over across his life. It is an unusual river: it surfaces already full-grown straight out of a cave in the Jura hills, a source he painted more than once. This mill sits on the Loue around 1872, its wheel and low sheds tucked beneath the pale limestone that walls the valley. He knew the ground intimately, born a few miles upstream in Ornans and raised on these banks. The stone here is built up thickly, much of it dragged on with a palette knife rather than a brush, so the cliff reads almost as a slab of real rock set into the canvas.