The Gust of Wind

Painted in 1865 and now in the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, this landscape subject of trees and vegetation in strong wind represents a rarely attempted theme in French Realist landscape — the landscape as meteorological event rather than static setting. Wind as a subject forced Courbet to capture the instability and movement of foliage, the bending of grass, and the dynamic disposition of the landscape under meteorological force. The subject had precedent in Constable's cloud studies and in the Barbizon painters' interest in weather, but Courbet's approach is characteristically more material — the gust of wind as physical force acting on physical matter, rather than as mood-conveying atmospheric effect.

Depicting wind required Courbet to develop techniques for suggesting movement in a static medium — swept cloud formations, bent grass and branch directions, the churned undersides of leaves. Directional impasto strokes follow the implied wind movement. The palette would shift toward cooler, more turbulent grey-greens compared to his calmer landscape subjects.