Una cartiera a Ornans

In the 1860s Courbet kept coming home to paint. This is the valley of the Loue, the river that ran past the house in Ornans where he grew up, and he painted its cliffs, springs and mills over and over across that decade. What sits in the middle of this one is a paper mill, a working building on the water rather than a wild beauty spot. Courbet liked the region exactly as it was, damp and rocky and used by people. He laid the stone and foliage on thickly, often with the palette knife, so the landscape feels built up as a physical thing. He painted the nearby source of the Loue at least four times in these same years.