View of Ornans

In the mid-1850s Gustave Courbet was making himself notorious in Paris by insisting he would paint only what he could actually see, no gods, no history, no idealised scenery. That stubborn argument carries this quiet landscape further than it first appears. It is simply Ornans, the small town in eastern France where he was born, seen across its deep limestone valley. You can pick out the church steeple among the clustered roofs along the river Loue, with the pale cliff called the Roche du Mont rising behind. This view stands near the beginning of a long series Courbet devoted to his native valley, the same rugged country he came back to for the rest of his career.