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Courbet (landscapes): *
The Castle of Chillon," oil on canvas painted in 1874
Courbet lived in exile in Switzerland from 1873 until his death. An active socialist, Courbet was active in French politics. He was imprisoned for six months in 1871 for his involvement with the Paris Commune. In 1873 he chose exile in Switzerland to avoid a large fine (the cost of re-building a destroyed column in Paris). During these final years, he painted a number of landscapes, including several scenes of water mysteriously emerging from the depths of the earth in the Jura Mountains of the France–Switzerland border. These landscapes include this castle which he painted several times. This is the most famous representation.
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Manet (landscapes):*
Concert in the Tuileries Gardens (1860-1)
This work may be considered the first modern painting. Some regarded the picture as unfinished; the suggested atmosphere imparts a sense of what the Tuileries gardens were like at the time; one may imagine the music and conversation. Despite the freedom of treatment the close-packed vertical forms is striking as is the manner in which the top hats of the men are grouped close to the women's full dresses. The canvas is painted in large clear areas, heightened by a few notes of brighter colour. Description is subordinated to visual sensation and there is some degree of distortion. It is a painting without any other significance than the art of painting (in this it broke form the academic school’s strict taxonomy of painting’s content). For the first time the viewer experiences a certain simultaneity of feelings (instead of a fixed form of composition) and, in this submission to their strength, a number of necessary deformations. Certain figures assume a disproportionate scale and coloured masses abound. All that counts is the effect of the whole.
