Gustave Courbet (French, 1819 – 1877)
“Rock Cliff Near Ornans”
Oil on Canvas. Signed and dated ’73 lower left.
Depicting cliffs of gray, rock reflected in the mirror-like surface of river Loue, with the grass grown summits forming a horizon before a growing cloudy sky; the water lapping a beach in the left foreground strewn with boulders.
Provenance:
– George Seney (1826-1893) NY, NYAs president of the Metropolitan Bank (New York City), Seney was situated to become a financier of newly chartered railroads. Charters organized or financed by banker Seney and his Seney Syndicate included the East Tennessee, Virginia and Georgia Railway and the Nickel Plate Road. He was best remembered for amassing a substantial collection of pre-Impressionist 19th-century European and American paintings, some of which he gave to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The donation included works by George Inness and Francis Davis Millet.
– Charles S. Haight Sr.- Sold through Sotheby’s Parke-Bernet Galleries January 17th, 1941.
– Sotheby’s Parke Bernet Galleries sold March 23, 1950 (lot 60- “Rock Cliff Near Ornans” Illustrated).
– Private collection Philadelphia Pennsylvania until 2019.
– Private collection, Washington DC.
Literature: World Collectors Annuary, Vol II 1950 by Fred A. Van Braam, Amsterdamn, Entry # 827.
See last images for Sotheby’s Parke Bernet 1950 catalog entry.