A Brook in the Forest, Jura

Landscapes feature prominently in Gustave Courbet’s art, both here, in its pure form, but also as the backdrop for other motifs. His animal and hunting paintings often feature landscapes, for example, and they also turn up in his character studies. More surprisingly, Courbet also used landscapes as a backdrop in his still lifes.

Courbet’s landscapes sort roughly into two categories: maritime landscapes and inland landscapes. The inland landscapes stem from his childhood haunts in the area around Ornans, a township near the Jura Mountains on the border between France and Switzerland. Courbet often depicted the area’s distinctive limestone bluffs and lush vegetation in his paintings from the 1860s.

What is so alluring about A brook in the forest, Jura is the sense of peace and tranquillity it evokes. The painting depicts a secluded area, probably far from civilization. For Courbet, who was also known as quite the provocateur at the Paris Salon, nature was a welcome refuge where he could wander by himself in quiet seclusion, surrounded by the forests and mountains of his childhood. In contrast with the broad horizons we encounter in his maritime landscapes, A brook in the forest, Jura showcases Courbet’s eye for the darker, more intimate “closed spaces” of nature.

In a letter to a friend dated 1850, Courbet declared that “… in our civilized society, I feel it is necessary to live the life of a savage”. Closeness to nature was a part of this lifestyle. There is also something “savage” here in how Courbet has worked on the canvas by scraping and etching the paint in order to create a sense of immediacy.