Eugène Cuvelier 1837-1900

The collection of John Chandler Bancroft, Middletown, Rhode Island

Gustave J. S. White Co., Auctioneers, Newport, Rhode Island, 1989

Acquired from the above by a New England antiques dealer

To the present owners, 1989

Stuttgart, Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, Eugène Cuvelier oder Die Legende vom Wald, March - May 1997

This view of the grounds of the abandoned Château de Courances (see also Lots 22 and 23), presumably taken in winter, shows one of the park's famous, though disused, waterways.  Visible in the treetops on the far shore are the ravens' nests referred to in the photograph's title.  Similar subject matter was handled by Charles-François Daubigny in his 1867 etching, Tree with Crows (Melot, Graphic Art of the Pre-Impressionists, D. 120), in which a congress of ravens or crows gathers in and around a cluster of trees.  The limitations of the photographic materials of Cuvelier's time would have prevented him from capturing an image of the birds in flight.  The bleak appearance of the photograph’s bare trees is also similar in mood as well as composition to Théodore Rousseau's large canvas, the La Forêt en Hiver au Coucher de Soleil (Michel Schulman, Théodore Rousseau 1812 - 1867: Catalogue Raisonné de l'Oeuvre Peint, no. 374), as well as to several of Rousseau's preparatory studies for the painting, including the oil-on-panel Soleil Couchant en Forêt l'Hiver (ibid., no. 377), and the charcoal drawing La Forêt en Hiver (Michel Schulman, Théodore Rousseau 1812 - 1867: Catalogue Raisonné de l'Oeuvre Graphique, no. 393). 

Gauss accounts for only one print of this image: the salt print offered here.