Courbet (other)

Jean Désiré Gustave Courbet ( , , ; 10 June 1819 – 31 December 1877) was a French painter who led the Realism movement in 19th-century French painting. Committed to painting only what he could see, he rejected academic convention and the Romanticism of the previous generation of visual artists. His independence set an example that was important to later artists, such as the Impressionists and the Cubists. Courbet occupies an important place in 19th-century French painting as an innovator and as an artist willing to make bold social statements through his work.

Courbet's paintings of the late 1840s and early 1850s brought him his first recognition. They challenged convention by depicting unidealized peasants and workers, often on a grand scale traditionally reserved for paintings of religious or historical subjects. Courbet's subsequent paintings were mostly of a less overtly political character: landscapes, seascapes, hunting scenes, nudes, and still lifes. Courbet, a socialist, was active in the political developments of France. He was imprisoned for six months in 1871 for his involvement with the Paris Commune and lived in exile in Switzerland from 1873 until his death four years later.

Biography

Gustave Courbet was born in 1819 to Régis and Sylvie Oudot Courbet in Ornans ( department of Doubs). Anti-monarchical feelings prevailed in the household. (His maternal grandfather fought in the French Revolution.) Courbet's sisters, Zoé, Zélie, and Juliette were his first models for drawing and painting. After moving to Paris he often returned home to Ornans to hunt, fish, and find inspiration.

Courbet went to Paris in 1839 and worked at the studio of Steuben and Hesse. An independent spirit, he soon left, preferring to develop his own style by studying the paintings of Spanish, Flemish and French masters in the Louvre, and painting copies of their work.

Courbet's first works were an '' Odalisque'' inspired by the writing of Victor Hugo and a ''Lélia'' illustrating George Sand, but he soon abandoned literary influences, choosing instead to base his paintings on observed reality. Among his paintings of the early 1840s are several self-portraits, Romantic in conception, in which the artist portrayed himself in various roles. These include ''Self-Portrait with Black Dog'' (c. 1842–44, accepted for exhibition at the 1844 Paris Salon), the theatrical ''Self-Portrait'' which is also known as ''Desperate Man'' (c. 1843–45), ''Lovers in the Countryside'' (1844, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lyon), ''The Sculptor'' (1845), ''The Wounded Man'' (1844–54, Musée d'Orsay, Paris), ''The Cellist, Self-Portrait'' (1847, Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, shown at the 1848 Salon), and ''Man with a Pipe'' (1848–49, Musée Fabre, Montpellier).

Trips to the Netherlands and Belgium in 1846–47 strengthened Courbet's belief that painters should portray the life around them, as Rembrandt, Hals and other Dutch masters had. By 1848, he had gained supporters among the younger critics, the Neo-romantics and Realists, notably Champfleury.

Courbet achieved his first Salon success in 1849 with his painting '' After Dinner at Ornans''. The work, reminiscent of Chardin and Le Nain, earned Courbet a gold medal and was purchased by the state. The gold medal meant that his works would no longer require jury approval for exhibition at the Salon—an exemption Courbet enjoyed until 1857 (when the rule changed).

In 1849–50, Courbet painted '' The Stone Breakers'' (destroyed in the Allied Bombing of Dresden in 1945), which Proudhon admired as an icon of peasant life; it has been called "the first of his great works". The painting was inspired by a scene Courbet witnessed on the roadside. He later explained to Champfleury and the writer Francis Wey: "It is not often that one encounters so complete an expression of poverty and so, right then and there I got the idea for a painting. I told them to come to my studio the next morning."

Realism

Courbet's work belonged neither to the predominant Romantic nor Neoclassical schools. History painting, which the Paris Salon esteemed as a painter's highest calling, did not interest him, for he believed that "the artists of one century rebasically incapable of reproducing the aspect of a past or future century ..." Instead, he maintained that the only possible source for living art is the artist's own experience. He and Jean-François Millet would find inspiration painting the life of peasants and workers.

Courbet painted figurative compositions, landscapes, seascapes, and still lifes. He courted controversy by addressing social issues in his work, and by painting subjects that were considered vulgar, such as the rural bourgeoisie, peasants, and working conditions of the poor. His work, along with that of Honoré Daumier and Jean-François Millet, became known as ''Realism''. For Courbet realism dealt not with the perfection of line and form, but entailed spontaneous and rough handling of paint, suggesting direct observation by the artist while portraying the irregularities in nature. He depicted the harshness of life, and in doing so challenged contemporary academic ideas of art. One of the distinctive features of Courbet's Realism was his lifelong attachment to his native province, the Franche-Comté, and of his birthplace, Ornans.

''The Stone Breakers''

Considered to be the first of Courbet's great works, ''The Stone Breakers'' of 1849 is an example of social realism that caused a sensation when it was first exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1850. The work was based on two men, one young and one old, whom Courbet discovered engaged in backbreaking labor on the side of the road when he returned to Ornans for an eight-month visit in October 1848. On his inspiration, Courbet told his friends and art critics Francis Wey and Jules Champfleury, "It is not often that one encounters so complete an expression of poverty and so, right then and there I got the idea for a painting."

While other artists had depicted the plight of the rural poor, Courbet's peasants are not idealized like those in works such as Breton's ''The Gleaners''.

In February 1945, the work was destroyed during World War II, along with 154 other pictures, when a transport vehicle moving the pictures to the castle of Königstein, near Dresden, was bombed by Allied forces.

''A Burial at Ornans''

The Salon of 1850–1851 found him triumphant with ''The Stone Breakers'', the ''Peasants of Flagey'' and ''A Burial at Ornans''. The ''Burial'', one of Courbet's most important works, records the funeral of his grand uncle which he attended in September 1848. People who attended the funeral were the models for the painting. Previously, models had been used as actors in historical narratives, but in ''Burial'' Courbet said he "painted the very people who had been present at the interment, all the townspeople". The result is a realistic presentation of them and life in Ornans.

The vast painting, measuring , drew both praise and fierce denunciations from critics and the public, in part because it upset convention by depicting a prosaic ritual on a scale which would previously have been reserved for a religious or royal subject.

According to art historian Sarah Faunce, "In Paris, the ''Burial'' was judged as a work that had thrust itself into the grand tradition of history painting, like an upstart in dirty boots crashing a genteel party, and in terms of that tradition it was, of course, found wanting." The painting lacks the sentimental rhetoric that was expected in a genre work: Courbet's mourners make no theatrical gestures of grief, and their faces seemed more caricatured than ennobled. The critics accused Courbet of a deliberate pursuit of ugliness.

Eventually, the public grew more interested in the new Realist approach, and the lavish, decadent fantasy of Romanticism lost popularity. Courbet well understood the importance of the painting, and said of it, "''Burial at Ornans'' was in reality the burial of romanticism."

Courbet became a celebrity and was spoken of as a genius, a "terrible socialist" and a "savage". He actively encouraged the public's perception of him as an unschooled peasant, while his ambition, his bold pronouncements to journalists, and his insistence on depicting his own life in his art gave him a reputation for unbridled vanity.

Courbet associated his ideas of realism in art with political anarchism, and, having gained an audience, he promoted democratic and socialist ideas by writing politically motivated essays and dissertations. His familiar visage was the object of frequent caricature in the popular French press.

In 1850, Courbet wrote to a friend:

During the 1850s, Courbet painted numerous figurative works using common folk and friends as his subjects, such as ''Village Damsels'' (1852), '' The Wrestlers'' (1853), '' The Bathers'' (1853), ''The Sleeping Spinner'' (1853), and ''The Wheat Sifters'' (1854).

''The Artist's Studio''

In 1855, Courbet submitted fourteen paintings for exhibition at the '' Exposition Universelle''. Three were rejected for lack of space, including ''A Burial at Ornans'' and his other monumental canvas ''The Artist's Studio''. Refusing to be denied, Courbet took matters into his own hands. He displayed forty of his paintings, including ''The Artist's Studio'', in his gallery called ''The Pavilion of Realism'' (Pavillon du Réalisme) which was a temporary structure that he erected next door to the official Salon-like ''Exposition Universelle''.

The work is an allegory of Courbet's life as a painter, seen as a heroic venture, in which he is flanked by friends and admirers on the right, and challenges and opposition to the left. Friends on the right include the art critics Champfleury, and Charles Baudelaire, and art collector Alfred Bruyas. On the left are figures (priest, prostitute, grave digger, merchant, and others) who represent what Courbet described in a letter to Champfleury as "the other world of trivial life, the people, misery, poverty, wealth, the exploited and the exploiters, the people who live off death."

In the foreground of the left-hand side is a man with dogs, who was not mentioned in Courbet's letter to Champfleury. X-rays show he was painted later, but his role in the painting is important: he is an allegory of the then-current French Emperor, Napoleon III, identified by his famous hunting dogs and iconic twirled mustache. By placing him on the left, Courbet publicly shows his disdain for the emperor and depicts him as a criminal, suggesting that his "ownership" of France is an illegal one.

Although artists like Eugène Delacroix were ardent champions of his effort, the public went to the show mostly out of curiosity and to deride him. Attendance and sales were disappointing, but Courbet's status as a hero to the French avant-garde became assured. He was admired by the American James Abbott McNeill Whistler, and he became an inspiration to the younger generation of French artists including Édouard Manet and the Impressionist painters. ''The Artist's Studio'' was recognized as a masterpiece by Delacroix, Baudelaire, and Champfleury, if not by the public.

Realist manifesto

Courbet wrote a Realist manifesto for the introduction to the catalogue of this independent, personal exhibition, echoing the tone of the period's political manifestos. In it, he asserts his goal as an artist is "to translate the customs, the ideas, the appearance of my epoch according to my own estimation."

Notoriety

In the Salon of 1857, Courbet showed six paintings. These included '' Young Ladies on the Banks of the Seine (Summer)'', depicting two prostitutes under a tree, as well as the first of many hunting scenes Courbet was to paint during the remainder of his life: ''Hind at Bay in the Snow'' and ''The Quarry''.

''Young Ladies on the Banks of the Seine'', painted in 1856, provoked a scandal. Art critics accustomed to conventional, "timeless" nude women in landscapes were shocked by Courbet's depiction of modern women casually displaying their undergarments.

By exhibiting sensational works alongside hunting scenes, of the sort that had brought popular success to the English painter Edwin Landseer, Courbet guaranteed himself "both notoriety and sales". During the 1860s, Courbet painted a series of increasingly erotic works such as '' Femme nue couchée''.

This culminated in '' The Origin of the World (L'Origine du monde)'' (1866), which depicts female genitalia and was not publicly exhibited until 1988, and '' Sleep'' (1866), featuring two women in bed. The latter painting became the subject of a police report when it was exhibited by a picture dealer in 1872.

Until about 1861, Napoléon's regime had exhibited authoritarian characteristics, using press censorship to prevent the spread of opposition, manipulating elections, and depriving Parliament of the right to free debate or any real power. In the 1860s, however, Napoléon III made more concessions to placate his liberal opponents. This change began by allowing free debates in Parliament and public reports of parliamentary debates. Press censorship, too, was relaxed and culminated in the appointment of the Liberal Émile Ollivier, previously a leader of the opposition to Napoléon's regime, as the ''de facto'' Prime Minister in 1870. As a sign of appeasement to the Liberals who admired Courbet, Napoleon III nominated him to the Legion of Honour in 1870. His refusal of the cross of the Legion of Honour angered those in power but made him immensely popular with those who opposed the prevailing regime.

File:Gustave Courbet, Femme nue couchée, 1862.jpg, '' Femme nue couchée'', 1862
File:Gustave Courbet - Jo, the Beautiful Irish Girl - Google Art Project.jpg, ''Portrait of Jo (La belle Irlandaise)'', 1865–66, Metropolitan Museum of Art, a painting of Joanna Hiffernan, the probable model for ''Sleep''
File:The Sleepers by Gustave Courbet.jpg, '' Le Sommeil (Sleep)'', 1866, Petit Palais, Musée des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris
File:Gustave Courbet - Young Bather.jpg, ''Young Bather'', 1866
File:Origin-of-the-World.jpg, '' The Origin of the World'' (''L'Origine du monde''), 1866, Musée d'Orsay, Paris

Courbet and the Paris Commune

On 4 September 1870, during the Franco-Prussian War, Courbet made a proposal that later came back to haunt him. He wrote a letter to the Government of National Defense, proposing that the column in the Place Vendôme, erected by Napoleon I to honour the victories of the French Army, be taken down. He wrote:

Courbet proposed that the Column be moved to a more appropriate place, such as the Hotel des Invalides, a military hospital. He also wrote an open letter addressed to the German Army and to German artists, proposing that German and French cannons should be melted down and crowned with a liberty cap, and made into a new monument on Place Vendôme, dedicated to the federation of the German and French people. The Government of National Defense did nothing about his suggestion to tear down the column, but it was not forgotten.

On 18 March, in the aftermath of the French defeat in the Franco-Prussian War, a revolutionary government called the Paris Commune briefly took power in the city. Courbet played an active part and organized a Federation of Artists, which held its first meeting on 5 April in the Grand Amphitheater of the School of Medicine. Some three hundred to four hundred painters, sculptors, architects, and decorators attended. There were some famous names on the list of members, including André Gill, Honoré Daumier, Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Eugène Pottier

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