LOS ANGELES (Agence France-Presse)—The Getty museum of Los Angeles will open in February the first major exhibition of landscape paintings by 19th century French artist Gustave Courbet.

The exhibition, Courbet and the Modern Landscape, will be displayed at the Getty Center between Feb. 21 and May 14.

The museum said it will bring "fresh attention to this neglected aspect of the artists career and its important place in the history of modern painting."

The exhibition will also travel to the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston in June and the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore in October.

Courbet and the Modern Landscape gathers a group of 45 landscapes dating from 1855 to 1877.

The museum said most of the paintings are from the 1860s, when Courbet was inspired by the countryside of his hometown of Ornans, in southeastern France, and the shores of the Normandy coast.

Many of these paintings have never been on view in the United States, and most have not been seen together, the museum said.

Copyright 2005 Agence France-Presse