GUSTAVE COURBET | PAYSAGE FRANC-COMTOIS OR LE VALLON VERT

William Buchanan, New York (and sold by the estate: American Art Association, New York, April 18, 1912, lot 68, illustrated as The Green Dell)

Galerie Claude Aubry, Paris

Sale: Sotheby's, London, July 2, 1974, lot 12 (illustrated as Paysage)

Acquired at the above sale

Robert Fernier, La vie et l'oeuvre de Gustave Courbet, Lausanne, 1978, vol. I, p. 258 , no. 476, illustrated p. 259

It is possible that Paysage Franc-Comtois or Le Vallon Vert is a composite of various elements, though the title indicates it is a view of the Franche-Comté, nestled in the Juras with its dramatic cliffs, verdant forests and receding river. Courbet’s painterly virtuosity is evident in the treatment of the feathered foliage, rushing water and cold granite of the clifftops. Unlike a number of Courbet’s sous-bois paintings, the lighter palette of the present work reveals the artist’s interest in the interplay of light and shadow as the sun’s rays are filtered between the jutting rock formations.  

The first known owner of Paysage Franc-Comtois or Le Vallon Vert was William Buchanan, a Brooklynite whose collection of “High Class Modern Paintings,” as the sale of his estate was titled, was sold in 1912. His collection included every titan of the nineteenth Century art world, from Jean Béraud and William Bouguereau to Emilio Sanchez-Perrier and Félix Ziem. Then titled The Green Dell, the present work was among the highlights of the sale and the first picture mentioned in the write-up provided by The New York Sun (“Fine Pictures Go To-Night”, The New York Sun, April 18, 1912, p, 11).