# Landscape with Large Trees

- By: Gustave Courbet (French, 1819–1877)
- Date: c. 1870
- Medium: black chalk with stumping on brown wove paper
- Classification: Drawing
- Dimensions: Sheet: 38.1 x 52.4 cm (15 x 20 5/8 in.)
- Culture: France, 19th century
- Credit line: Dudley P. Allen Fund
- Museum: [Cleveland Museum of Art](https://clevelandart.org/art/1976.18)
- Rights: [Public domain (CC0)](https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)
- Picture: https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1976.18/1976.18_web.jpg
- Who can see it: Little Ones profiles and older (museums give no ratings; placed by Invisible Network from the museum's own words)

The relatively few drawings that Gustave Courbet produced include the group of landscapes to which this example belongs. Rather than referencing a specific place, it combines a wide range of source material—tourist destinations the artist visited in Switzerland, his home in the Franche-Comté region, and paintings by Claude Lorrain and other historical landscapists. Courbet began by applying a hazy middletone in charcoal before adding detail with a darker, sharpened stick. Although surely appealing to collectors of the time, such works also had ideological significance, presenting an untouched terrain that suggested independence and freedom.