Entrée d'un gave
Entrée d'un gave ("Source of a mountain stream") is an 1876 oil painting by French artist Gustave Courbet (1819–1877) which is part of the European collection at the Birmingham Museum of Art.
The small (23.25"x17.88") painting on canvas contains a scene of a dark pool of water surrounded by tall, shadowed cliffs. Though it depicts a landscape similar to those found in the Jura mountains near Courbet's native Ornans, it was painted late in his life while he was living on Lake Geneva in Switzerland. He had moved there to avoid paying fines levied against him as punishment for inspiring the dismantling of Napoleon's monumental Vendôme column.
The painting was owned by Parisian businessman Moïse Lévy de Benzion before World War II. In 1941 it was seized by the Einsatztab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR) on behalf of occupying Nazi forces. It was first taken to the Galerie nationale du Jeu de Paume, which served as a sorting house for appropriated artwork. From there it was brought to Neuschwanstein Castle in Germany at the direction of Hermann Göring, and later traded to a private art gallery in Lucerne, Switzerland. The painting was among the misappropriated artworks recovered by the Allied Forces' Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives section (MFAA). Lévy de Benzion had died in 1943, so the painting was returned to his heirs on December 15, 1948.
The work was acquired by the museum in 1999.
References
- Nancy H. Yeide. Beyond the Dreams of Avarice: The Hermann Goering Collection
- Nicholas, Lynn H. (2009) The Rape of Europa: The Fate of Europe's Treasures in the Third Reich and the Second World War. New York: Random House ISBN 0307739724
External links
- "Entrée d'un gave" at the Google Cultural Institute