River and Rocks

Inscription: Signed (lower left): G. Courbet

Hendrick Adolf Steengracht van Duivenvoorde, The Hague (until d. 1912; posthumous sale, Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, June 10, 1913, no. 4, as "Rivière et rochers"); James Stillman, Paris and New York (until d. 1918); his son, Ernest Goodrich Stillman, New York (until 1922)

New York. American Federation of Arts. "A Landscape View of 19th Century France (circulating exhibition)," September 1, 1954–1957, no catalogue?

New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "The Impressionist Epoch," December 12, 1974–February 10, 1975, not in catalogue.

B[ryson]. B[urroughs]. "An Anonymous Gift." Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 17 (March 1922), p. 55.

R. H. Wile[n]ski. French Painting. Boston, 1931, p. 224, dates it before 1855.

Josephine L. Allen and Elizabeth E. Gardner. A Concise Catalogue of the European Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 1954, p. 22.

Gaston Delestre. Letter to Margaretta Salinger. March 10, 1962, doubts both the subject and the attribution, stating that the site depicted is not the Brook of the Black Well, and that it is painted by Cherubin Pata (1827–1899), a student and collaborator of Courbet.

Gaston Delestre. Letter to Margaretta Salinger. May 22, 1962, confirms that this picture does not depict the Brook of the Black Well, but rather a "paysage de composition"; now believes it more likely to have been painted by another student of Courbet, Marcel Ordinaire (1848–1896), perhaps in collaboration with Courbet, rather than by Pata.

Charles Sterling and Margaretta M. Salinger. French Paintings: A Catalogue of the Collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Vol. 2, XIX Century. New York, 1966, pp. 122–23, ill., date it about 1864–65.

Katharine Baetjer. European Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art by Artists Born Before 1865: A Summary Catalogue. New York, 1995, p. 426, ill.

Sarah Herring. The Nineteenth-Century French Paintings: Volume I, the Barbizon School. Vol. 1, London, 2019, p. 275, fig. 3, under NG 3243 (color).

Laura D. Corey and Alice Cooney Frelinghuysen. "Visions of Collecting." Making The Met, 1870–2020. Ed. Andrea Bayer with Laura D. Corey. Exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 2020, p. 265 n. 46.