Gustave Courbet at the Met
The Courbet retrospective is wonderful. Some 130 works, giving a good sense of his oeuvre. I came out of it feeling like I met a major major artist. I was struck by the extent to which his subjects affected his admirers like Cezanne: the portraits, the mountains, the female bathers, the apples. The rooms are organized in terms of genres, and Corbert painted in many genres: self-portraits, portraits, large group paintings, landscapes, seascapes (which he called "landscapes of the sea), nudes, still life, hunting scenes. The painting of Jo, Whistler's lover, is a portrait, but is also a genre piece with its suggestion of Pre-Raphaelite maidens. Jo, the Beautiful Irishwoman , 1866 The seascapes are powerful. They threaten with real, primitive force, as if the waves are about the crash over me, and draw me out to the sea. The Wave , 1869 And most moving, in a most precise way, is his painting of the trout, displayed in the last room of the retrospective. You can still see the li...