Courbet exhibit in Maryland spotlights painter's innovations
BALTIMORE -- When Gustave Courbet painted "The Stream of the Puits Noir," or black well, he emphasized the noir. The picture is drenched in black to the point of near-abstraction. It offers a primordial view of nature, yet it's more seductive than foreboding. "Courbet and the Modern Landscape," an exhibition on display at the Walters Art Museum, makes the case for Courbet (1819-1877) as a radical. Best known for his realist, figural pictures such as "Burial at Ornans," Courbet churned out countless landscapes in his late career, but many of them were painted by assistants with only a brief touchup by the master.

