ジュラの冬

Courbet painted this around 1875 from the wrong side of a border. After the Paris Commune of 1871 he was held responsible for the pulling down of the Vendôme Column, and in 1873, facing a bill for putting it back up, he crossed into Switzerland and settled at La Tour-de-Peilz on Lake Geneva. The Jura range runs along the frontier between the two countries, so the snow country here was both close at hand and out of bounds. The court eventually fixed his share of the cost at some 323,000 francs, payable in yearly instalments starting on the first of January 1878. He died on 31 December 1877, the day before the first one fell due. The Phillips Collection in Washington bought the picture in 1958.