The Stream (Le Ruisseau du Puits-Noir; vallée de la Loue)

The Stream (Le Ruisseau du Puits-Noir; vallée de la Loue), painted in 1855 and held at the National Gallery of Art, depicts the stream flowing through the famously shadowed Puits-Noir valley — a name meaning 'black well' — near Ornans in the Franche-Comté. This was one of the most frequently painted sites in Courbet's home landscape, and he returned to it across different seasons and at different scales throughout his career. The stream itself posed the full range of challenges in his empirical approach to landscape: moving water, reflective surfaces, the interplay of deep shadow and sudden light, the specific texture of streambed rocks and bank vegetation. Courbet's treatment of this particular valley consistently emphasizes its enclosed, shadowed, almost claustrophobic character, refusing the conventional pastoral prettiness that might make such a scene more conventionally appealing.

Oil on canvas, Courbet builds the stream's visual character through a combination of horizontal brushwork for the water's surface, denser vertical and diagonal strokes for the overhanging vegetation, and palette knife impasto for the rock surfaces of the valley walls and streambed. The characteristic cool tonality of this deeply shadowed valley is achieved through blue-grey underpaint visible in the shadow areas.