Courbet's Etretat: les Falaises will lead Sotheby's November 6-7 sale

Sotheby's November 6-7 New York sale of impressionist and modern art will feature a selection of 18 works from the Zieseniss collection. The highlight will be Etretat: les Falaises, a painting by Gustave Courbet dating to 1870, which carries an estimate of $2m-3m, reports ArtDaily.

Courbet was a 19th century French painter and a founder of the realist movement. The realists rejected romanticism, with its emphasis on heightened and exotic subject matter, and instead tried to portray real people and the issues that they faced without avoiding sordid and unpleasant details.

Coubert Zieseniss Sotheby's
Courbet's painting of the small French town of Etretat dates to 1870

The record price paid at auction for a painting by Courbet is $1.6m for Femme Neu.

Andrew Strauss, international specialist in Sotheby's impressionist and modern art department, told the publication: "Painted in 1870 - the year of Monet's Impression: Sunrise which gave the movement its name - Courbet's Etretat : les falaises is a magisterial work. Depicting the cliffs that Monet would later claim his own, it displays a remarkable modernity in its structure and brushwork.

"This new approach to painting outdoors, capturing the intensity of ever-changing light, marked a turning point and paved the way for the impressionists." 

The sale also features Les Coteaux de Thierceville, meules, berger et troupeau - an 1897 painting by father of impressionism Camille Pissarro. It carries an identical estimate of $2m-3m. 

We have this handwritten letter by Pierre-Auguste Renoir.

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