1877
unspecified
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
Dominant colour
Panoramic View of the Alps, Les Dents du Midi is a 1877 unspecified by Gustave Courbet, a Impressionism work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
Here’s Courbet’s unfinished Alps view. He painted it from exile in Switzerland, brushstrokes rough near the top, sloppy and bare at the bottom right. You can still see his thumbprints in the thick paint where he left it. He used a knife to scrape the whites right onto the canvas. No blending, just bold stripes of sky and rock. Want to see his hands-on style up close? Check Gustave Courbet (French, 1819–1877) in Cleveland.
Courbet was still working on this large landscape, intended for the Paris Universal Exposition of 1879, when he died in December 1877. He painted it during his exile in Switzerland, where he had fled after being condemned for subversive activities in the Paris Commune of 1871. The view looks south over Lake Geneva toward the mountains called Les Dents du Midi. While some areas are heavily worked with a palette knife, the lower right remains unfinished.
This late, unfinished painting reveals some of Courbet's techniques. At the top of the mountains you can see how different brushstrokes and thickly applied paint were used to differentiate the texture of the clouds from the snow.
Read the full account in the museum source.
Jean Désiré Gustave Courbet (UK: KOOR-bay; US: koor-BAY; French: ; 10 June 1819 – 31 December 1877) was a French painter who led the Realism movement in 19th-century French painting.
See the richer artist page
