Cleveland Museum of Art

Landscape with Large Trees

Gustave Courbet

Date

c. 1870

Medium

black chalk with stumping on brown wove paper

Culture

France, 19th century

Department

Drawings

Institution

Cleveland Museum of Art

The relatively few drawings that Gustave Courbet produced include the group of landscapes to which this example belongs. Rather than referencing a specific place, it combines a wide range of source material—tourist destinations the artist visited in Switzerland, his home in the Franche-Comté region, and paintings by Claude Lorrain and other historical landscapists. Courbet began by applying a hazy middletone in charcoal before adding detail with a darker, sharpened stick. Although surely appealing to collectors of the time, such works also had ideological significance, presenting an untouched terrain that suggested independence and freedom. The slightly blurred appearance of this drawing recalls a similar effect common in early landscape photography.

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