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In 2016, a landscape painting of the source of the Lison river in France was discovered at the University of Pennsylvania and was immediately suspected of being the work of Gustave Courbet. A lengthy authentication process began in 2018 and the landscape has since been confirmed as his. This new discovery sparked an exhibition showcasing the infamous painter's modern landscape practice. Titled At the Source: A Courbet Landscape Rediscovered, the exhibition is presented at the University of Pennsylvania's Arthur Ross Gallery from February 4 to May 28, 2023. Focusing on the motifs of grottos and waterfalls in his art of the 1850s and 1860s, it highlights the rediscovered Courbet painting, not shown in public for close to 100 years, and emphasizes the process of authenticating and conserving this historic work.
Gustave Courbet (1819-1877) was a French painter who led the Realism movement of the mid nineteenth-century. Committed to painting only what he could see, he rejected academic conventions and the Romanticism of the previous generation of artists. Courbet's paintings of the late 1840s and early 1850s brought him his first recognition. They challenged tradition by depicting unidealized peasants and workers, often on a grand scale previously reserved for paintings of religious or historical subjects. Courbet's subsequent paintings offer a wide range of genres and broadened the political character of his art: landscapes, seascapes, hunting scenes, nudes, and still lifes. This heavily illustrated catalog brings together essays by leading Courbet scholars, including Petra ten-Doesschate Chu, Aruna D'Souza, Paul Galvez, and Mary Morton, and situates Courbet's modern landscapes within the genre of nineteenth-century plein-air painting. Contextualizing the newly discovered work in relation to other visual depictions of the site, the catalog reproduces postcards and maps as well as the few other versions of the Source of the Lison that Courbet painted, including other related subjects. The essays draw connections between Courbet's paintings and his political activism, his interests in geology and environmentalism, and his engagement with issues of gender.Lynn Marsden-Atlass has been the Executive Director of the Arthur Ross Gallery since 2008 and Curator of the University of Pennsylvania Art Collection since 2010. She has curated 32 exhibitions at the Arthur Ross Gallery, organized nine exhibitions drawn from the Penn Art Collection and partnered with faculty from the Department of the History of Art on eight Curatorial Seminar exhibitions. The Gallery's multidisciplinary programs of artist talks, music, dance, theatre, and poetry have expanded access and inclusion, and doubled attendance. Inaugurated in 2015, the Susan T. Marx Distinguished Lecture has brought world-renowned artists, museum directors, and scholars to inspire students and the Philadelphia community.
As University Curator, Marsden-Atlass has revitalized the campus loan program, introduced onsite object-based learning, established open access to the collection, and new scholarship. The Penn Art Collection includes over 8,000 objects located in 115 different locations across campus. Marsden-Atlass is Chair of the On-Campus Art Committee and the Art Advisory Committee. In 2020 she was appointed to the Campus Iconography Group.
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