Sunset, Vevey, Switzerland

Gustave Courbet, a proponent of Realism, is best known for his monumental images of French laborers. Yet he also painted arresting landscapes.

In 1871, during the Paris Commune, the insurgents destroyed the imperial Napoleonic column in the Place Vendôme. Courbet, a leading figure in the uprising, was held responsible and served six months in prison. Re-tried by the new government, he was ordered to pay for reconstruction of the column, an impossible sum. In July 1873, fearing further imprisonment, Courbet entered exile in Switzerland, settling outside Vevey.

A few months earlier, in February 1873, Cincinnati judge George Hoadly, an admirer of Courbet’s radical politics, wrote to Moncure Conway, a friend of the artist’s, to commission a painting. In 1874 Conway visited Courbet’s studio and chose this sunset view over the lake at Vevey for Hoadly. Conway commented that he found the artist’s recent paintings “powerful, but with a somber tone.”