ラ・スルス・ブルーの風景

Courbet painted this in 1872, the first year he was at liberty again. He had spent months in prison and then in a clinic in Paris for his part in the toppling of the Vendome Column during the Commune, and he came out in March to a country that had not forgiven him; the Salon jury turned his submissions away. So he went home to the Doubs, close to the Swiss border, and painted its water and its rock. La Source Bleue is a spring at Malbuisson where water rises through limestone and holds a deep blue-green. Courbet read geology for pleasure, and the cliff here gets the same attention as the pool, wet and layered and crumbling, the paint pushed about with a knife as much as a brush.