Gustave Courbet

Mme Pioch-Granat, Chateau d’Uzès
Thence by descent (her son)
Private Collector
Acquired from the above by the present owner in 1985

The following condition report was kindly provided by Simon Parkes Art Conservation, Inc.: This canvas is unlined and is well stretched on its original stretcher. The painting may be clean. If the frame were touched up, the work could be hung in its current state. Under ultraviolet light, remnants of an old varnish can be seen, but there are also fairly clear areas of cleaned pigment. Apart from a few small dots of retouch in the lower right, there are no restorations. The unlined canvas and the conspicuous lack of retouching result in an extremely well preserved painting.
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The present work’s surface is characteristically Courbet in its bold coloration and an energetic handling of paint, varying between brush and palette knife. As the viewer steps back from the composition the perspective deepens, large blocks of gold-green reveal themselves to be the layered branches of reaching trees, whereas the fine lines of paint suggest the artists carefully study of the delicate vegetation growing along the stream.  Unlike a number of Courbet’s darker, shadow sous-bois paintings, the lighter palette of the present work suggests the artist’s concern in capturing the sun’s rays as they filtered through the forest canopy.  Interestingly, with Duex Chevrueils dans la forêt Courbet employed a white ground (versus the more frequent choices of red or blue) as the starting point for the composition, similar to other works of 1865-66, specifically the “Low Tide” series on the Channel coast which also developed the artist’s response to shifting light.