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Your galleryThe Brook of Les Puits-Noir
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- Where does your eye go next?
- What would you ask about this work?
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Follow the bright broken water into the dark grove, then find the small animal standing on the bank to the right.
Courbet places us close to a shaded brook rather than offering an expansive panorama. Rocks, trunks, and foliage crowd around the water, with only a small opening of sky. Broken pale marks give the stream movement and guide the eye through an otherwise dense, dark landscape.
Oil on canvas · 46.5 × 55.7 cm · Art Institute of Chicago · Realism
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Details and source
- Museum title
- The Brook of Les Puits-Noir
- Artist
- Gustave Courbet (French, 1819–1877)
- Date
- c. 1855
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Dimensions
- 46.5 × 55.7 cm (18 1/4 × 21 7/8 in.); Framed: 77.5 × 87.7 × 9.6 cm (30 1/2 × 34 1/2 × 3 3/4 in.)
- Credit line
- Mr. and Mrs. Martin A. Ryerson Collection
- Image license
- CC0 1.0 · Public domain
- Museum record
- Art Institute of Chicago
Galler’s rooms and hanging scale are imagined. The image is the museum’s original digital reproduction.