The Weir at the Mill

Courbet, who had put on his own exhibition in Paris in 1855 with the title “Le réalisme” out of protest at the rejection of his works, is the link between the Barbizon school and French modernism. His modernity was not in his subject matter but rather in his innovative use of paint and colour. He was the first to be accused of “dirty painting,” an accusation that was later to be levelled at his successors like Max Liebermann. Courbet painted numerous landscapes, most frequently depicting the chalk cliffs of the Jura mountains and the river valley of the Loue near where he was born in Ornans. This sombre view of a weir was painted on a black ground in the new spatula technique developed around 1865, not with the glowing patches of colour of other works of the time, but with consistently subdued tones of green, blue, and brown. In 1864 Courbet spoke about this way of building up a picture out of darkness: “You are puzzled that my canvas is black. But nature without the sun is dark and black; I am doing what light does, all I do is lighten everything that stands out and the picture is finished.” One of the main themes in Courbet’s work is water with all its interpretative potential: moving or still, bubbling up as a spring, standing in a grotto, flowing freely or breaking over itself as a wave. In his famous studio picture from 1855, Courbet portrayed himself working on a landscape. There again it is a region from the French Jura, with a cliff, water, and a mill.