The Hidden Brook

From 1873 until his death in 1877, Courbet lived in self-imposed exile in Switzerland. Separated from the people and places that inspired many of his canvases, and pressed to produce salable works, he made repetitions and variations of earlier compositions, often with the help of studio assistants. This landscape evokes the secluded streams, lush foliage, and craggy bluffs of the artist’s native Franche-Comté region in eastern France, particularly his views of the Puits-Noir (Black Well). The subject of his first success as a landscape painter, in 1855, it would recur in his work for more than a decade.