Winter in the Jura

Courbet's winter landscapes belong to the Franche-Comté tradition of recording the Jura's severe winters — heavy snow cover, bare trees against grey skies, the particular silence of a landscape locked under cold. This 1875 canvas at the Phillips Collection was painted during his Swiss exile, after his imprisonment for the Vendôme Column affair and his flight to avoid ruinous financial penalties. Working from Lake Geneva, Courbet found the Alpine landscape in some ways analogous to his native Jura, and winter subjects allowed him to produce canvases that could satisfy the French market's appetite for his distinctive landscape approach without requiring him to be physically present in France. The winter Jura landscape carries the weight of enforced absence — a homeland painted from memory and exile, its seasonal severity perhaps resonating with his own circumstances.

Snow in Courbet's winter landscapes is handled with palette knife and brush, building up white impasto that physically suggests accumulation. Bare tree silhouettes are painted with dark, fluid marks against the white ground. The palette is restricted to near-whites, blue-greys, and the dark warm-grey of exposed bark. The sky in winter subjects tends toward pale, uniform grey that harmonizes with the snow below.