Coucher de Soleil en forêt As suggested by its dating, the unreleased work traces back to the time of Courbet’s exile. It seems to be an extreme, harrowed and solemn reconsideration or “memory” of the places of his birth, adolescence and, albeit with several gaps, his whole existence. Courbet would never forget them, making them appear again, in a complete form or fragments, in several paintings of his last years. This subject of the Ornanian inserts in the master's Swiss catalog would deserve a special careful study. After all, with methodological procedure, Courbet had put it into practice much earlier, sometimes with results only based upon the richness of painting.