Trees in the Snow
About this artwork
Courbet first started to paint snow scenes in the winter of 1856-57, but it was only in the 1860s that he developed a strong interest in this theme. He was no doubt inspired by the countryside of his native Franche-Comté, which suffered particularly heavy falls of snow in the winter of 1866-67. The foreground motif of two beech trees recurs in a number of paintings by Courbet from 1858-66. It is highly probable that this picture shows an imagined, rather than a real landscape, in which favourite landscape elements such as the beech trees were reused. Courbet’s snow scenes were a source of inspiration to the Impressionists, notably Sisley, Monet and Pissarro.
Updated before 2020
see media-
artist:Gustave Courbet (1819 - 1877) French
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title:Trees in the Snow
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date created:About 1865
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materials:Oil on canvas
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measurements:72.30 x 91.50 cm; Framed: 96.50 x 114.80 x 11.00 cm
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object type:
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credit line:Presented by Sir Alexander Maitland in memory of his wife Rosalind, 1960
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accession number:NG 2234
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gallery:
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subject:
Gustave Courbet
Gustave Courbet
Courbet was the great rebel of nineteenth-century French art. He rejected the established conventions of academic painting, with its emphasis on idealised historical and mythological subjects, in favour of real subjects from ordinary life. Courbet staged his own exhibition in his 'Pavilion of...