Archive for posts tagged with ‘escape to Nature’


Jan 28 2011

The Wave by Gustave Courbet, 1870

French / Landscape / Paintings (Reproductions) - 1 year ago - troycapc

The Wave by Gustave Courbet, 1870

Courbet painted this when he was fifty years old and it is a wonderful example of his Realist style in which he roughly and intimate portrayed the harshness of experience and the scenes which he encountered in life.  The painting has been interpreted as an escape from the terrors of the Industrial Revolution and an embracing of the power of Nature.  Courbet created the work in a cottage on the Norman coast in which he lost himself in the creative process.  Within a year, he was imprisoned for six months during the Paris Comune of 1871 and afterwards went into a self-imposed exile to Switzerland where he died on December 31, 1877.  This masterpiece is in the Musee d’Orsay in Paris.

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