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Date : near 1864
Material : Oil on canvas
| Item 3 on 11
European Painting
Painting (Landscape)
Area related
France
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| Description |  |
A popular tourist destination in Courbet's native region of southeastern France, the grotto of Sarrazine held a powerful grip on the artist's imagination. He painted it, and related geological sites, numerous times in 1864. Courbet used the cave, an unusual subject for landscape, to propose radical new ideas about composition and technique. Here the human presence is virtually eliminated, suggested only by the delicate wooding scaffolding that hugs the curved back wall. The cave fills the vortexlike composition, underscoring our close-up view of its mineral-rich, craggy, and moss-covered surfaces that engulf the viewer on all sides. Courbet used brushes and palette knives to create a laborious worked surface, a dense mosaic of colors and textures evoking the rock strata. Staggering in its modernity, the painting verges on abstraction.
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