The Stream at Puits-Noir

After years of scandalizing Paris with his large, defiant scenes of ordinary people, Courbet kept returning home to the valleys around Ornans, where he had grown up. One narrow, shaded gorge there, called the Puits-Noir, the black well, drew him back again and again; he painted its stream and dripping rocks in about 20 versions. This is one of them, from 1865. The light barely reaches the water, filtered through overhanging trees, and much of the rock and foliage is laid on thickly with a palette knife rather than a brush. There are no figures and no story, just a damp, enclosed pocket of forest a short walk from the house where he was born.