Gustave Courbet

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Courbet, Gustave (b Ornans, Franche-Comté, 10 June 1819; d La Tour de Peilz, Switzerland, 31 Dec. 1877). French painter, one of the most powerful personalities in 19th-century art. He was the son of a prosperous farmer at Ornans, at the foot of the Jura Mountains, near the Swiss border. His country upbringing was important to his art, for although he spent most of his career in Paris, he rarely painted urban subjects (‘His palette smells of hay,’ Cézanne said of him). He was a man of independent character and obstinate self-assurance, and claimed to be self-taught. In fact he studied with various minor masters in Ornans, Besançon, and Paris, where he moved in 1839, but he learnt more from copying the work of 17th-century naturalists such as Caravaggio and Velázquez in the Louvre. It was largely from them that he derived his very solid and weighty style, with its strong contrasts of light and shade.

Courbet's earliest pictures (including several narcissistic self-portraits) were in the Romantic tradition, but with three large canvases exhibited at the Salon of 1850 he established himself as the leader of the realist movement: these are A Burial at Ornans (Mus. d'Orsay, Paris), Peasants at Flagey (Mus. B.-A., Besançon), and The Stone Breakers (formerly in Dresden, but destroyed in the Second World War). The huge burial scene in particular made an enormous impact; it was attacked by some critics for its alleged crudity and deliberate ugliness, but also hailed for its powerful naturalism (he got the idea for the picture at his grandfather's funeral). Never before had a scene from everyday life been presented in such an epic manner and Courbet was cast in the role of a revolutionary socialist. He gladly accepted this role (although it is unlikely that he painted the picture with political intention) and he became a friend and follower of the anarchist philosopher Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809–65), who gave him a prominent place in his book Du principe de l'art et de sa destination sociale (1865). Courbet's boldness and self-confidence are as evident in his technique as in his choice of subjects. He often used a palette knife to apply paint and his work shows an unprecedented relish for the physical substance of his materials.

Courbet's unconventionality and hatred of authority were expressed most forcefully in 1855, when two of his paintings were rejected for exhibition at the Paris Exposition Universelle (World Fair) and he organized instead a one-man show in a building he titled ‘The Pavilion of Realism’ situated near the Exposition entrance. The painting that formed the centrepiece of the exhibition (one of the two rejected pictures) is now his most celebrated work, The Painter's Studio (1854–5, Mus. d'Orsay). This huge (6-m (20-ft) wide) canvas was subtitled by Courbet ‘a real allegory [a seeming contradiction in terms] summing up seven years in my artistic life’. In a letter to his friend Champfleury printed in the accompanying catalogue he wrote a long (but not very clear) account of it, describing it as ‘the moral and physical history of my studio’ and saying it showed ‘all the people who serve my cause, sustain me in my ideal and support my activity’. These friends and mentors are shown on the right (among them are Baudelaire, Champfleury, Proudhon, and the collector Alfred Bruyas (1821–77), Courbet's most important patron); on the left are symbolic figures of the poor and their exploiters. Between the two groups Courbet sits proudly at his easel, watched by a magnificent female nude model; in presenting himself as the artist-hero, and in taking as his subject the activity of creating art, he sounded a note that reverberated into the 20th century.

Interpretations of the picture have been many and varied; it has been seen as an esoteric representation of Freemasonry, for example, or more plausibly as containing a covert attack on Napoleon III. Many contemporaries were baffled or repelled by the mixture of allegory, portraiture, and social comment, and the exhibition drew a low attendance. Subsequently Courbet's work became less doctrinaire. His colours were less sombre and he often chose more obviously attractive subjects—landscapes from the Forest of Fontainebleau, the Jura, or the Mediterranean, seascapes, still-lifes, or comely and sensual nudes.

Following the abdication of Napoleon III, Courbet was appointed head of the arts commission of the Commune, the short-lived revolutionary government of Paris (March–May 1871). When the Commune was brutally suppressed, he was sentenced to six months' imprisonment for his role in the destruction of the Vendôme Column, a symbol of Bonapartism. He was released in 1872, but the following year he was decreed to be personally responsible for the cost of re-erecting the Column. Unable to pay and fearing arrest, he went into exile in Switzerland. He stayed there for the remaining four years of his life, painting mainly landscapes and portraits.

Courbet's resounding rejection of idealization and his concentration on the tangible reality of things had an enormous influence on 19th-century art: ‘Superbly plebeian…Courbet acted as the bull that smashed the china shop of polite art, whether academic or preciously avant-gardist, thus enabling a new generation (including the Impressionists) to concentrate on the problem of expressing visual experience’ ( Lorenz Eitner, An Outline of 19th Century European Painting, 1987). ‘Painting’, Courbet said, ‘is an essentially concrete art and can only consist of the representation of real and existing objects.’ When asked to include angels in a painting for a church he replied: ‘I have never seen angels. Show me an angel and I will paint one.’

Courbet, Gustave (1819–77). French painter, one of the most powerful personalities in 19th-century art. He was born at Ornans, at the foot of the Jura Mountains, near the Swiss border, the son of a prosperous farmer. His country upbringing was important to his art, for although he spent most of his career in Paris, he rarely painted urban subjects (‘His palette smells of hay’, Cézanne said of him). He was a man of independent character and obstinate self-assurance, and claimed to be self-taught. In fact he studied with various minor masters in Ornans, Besançon and Paris, where he moved in 1839, but he learnt more from copying the work of 17th-century naturalists such as Caravaggio and Velázquez in the Louvre. It was largely from them that he derived his very solid and weighty style, with its strong contrasts of light and shade. His earliest pictures (including several narcissistic self-portraits) were in the Romantic tradition, but with three large canvases exhibited at the Salon of 1850 he established himself as the leader of the Realist movement: these are A Burial at Ornans (Mus. d'Orsay, Paris), Peasants at Flagey (Mus. B.-A., Besançon), and The Stone Breakers (formerly in Dresden, but destroyed in the Second World War). The huge burial scene in particular made an enormous impact; it was attacked in some quarters for its alleged crudity and deliberate ugliness, but also hailed for its powerful naturalism (he got the idea for the picture at his grandfather's funeral). Never before had a scene from everyday life been presented in such an epic manner and Courbet was cast in the role of a revolutionary socialist. He gladly accepted this role (although it is unlikely that he painted the picture with political intention) and he became a friend and follower of the anarchist philosopher Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, collaborating on his book On Art and its Social Significance (1863). Courbet's boldness and self-confidence are as evident in his technique as in his choice of subjects. He often used a palette knife to apply paint and his work shows an unprecedented relish for the physical substance of his materials.

Courbet's unconventionality and hatred of authority were expressed most forcefully in 1855, when, dissatisfied with the representation allotted to him at the Paris Universal Exhibition, he organized a pavilion for his own work, calling it ‘Le Réalisme’. Included in the works he showed here was his most celebrated picture, The Painter's Studio (1854–5, Mus. d'Orsay). This huge canvas (6 m (20 ft) wide) was subtitled by Courbet, ‘a real allegory [a seeming contradiction in terms] summing up seven years in my artistic life’. He wrote a long (but not very clear) account of it, describing it as ‘the moral and physical history of my studio’ and saying it showed ‘all the people who serve my cause, sustain me in my ideal and support my activity’. In it he presents himself as the artist-hero, and in taking as his subject the activity of creating art he sounded a note that reverberated into the 20th century. Interpretations of the picture have been many and varied, and it has recently been shown that it has covert but carefully thought-out political content, attacking Napoleon III. Subsequently, however, his work became less doctrinaire. His colours were less sombre and he often chose more obviously attractive subjects—landscapes from the Forest of Fontainebleau, the Jura, or the Mediterranean, seascapes, still lifes, or comely and sensual nudes. Following the abdication of Napoleon III in 1870, Courbet was appointed head of the arts commission of the Commune, the short-lived revolutionary government of Paris. When the Commune was suppressed by government troops, he was sentenced to six months' imprisonment for his role in the destruction of the Vendôme Column, a symbol of Bonapartism. He was released in 1872, but the following year he was decreed to be personally responsible for the cost of re-erecting the Column. Unable to pay and fearing arrest, he went into exile in Switzerland. He stayed there for the remaining four years of his life, painting mainly landscapes and portraits.

Courbet's resounding rejection of idealization and his concentration on the tangible reality of things had an enormous influence on 19th-century art: ‘Superbly plebeian…Courbet acted as the bull that smashed the china shop of polite art, whether academic or preciously avant-gardist, thus enabling a new generation (including the Impressionists) to concentrate on the problem of expressing visual experience’ (Lorenz Eitner, An Outline of 19th Century European Painting, 1987). ‘Painting’, he said, ‘is an art of sight and should therefore concern itself with things seen; it should, therefore, abandon both the historical scenes of the classical school and poetic subjects from Goethe and Shakespeare favoured by the Romantic school.’ When asked to include angels in a painting for a church he replied: ‘I have never seen angels. Show me an angel and I will paint one.’

Gustave Courbet , 1819–77, French painter, b. Ornans. He moved to Paris in 1839 and studied there, learning chiefly by copying masterpieces in the Louvre. An avowed realist, Courbet was always at odds with vested authority, aesthetic or political. In 1847 his Wounded Man (Louvre) was rejected by the Salon , although two of his earlier pictures had been accepted. He first won wide attention with his After Dinner at Ornans (Lille) in 1849. The next year he exhibited his famous Funeral at Ornans (1849–50) and Stonebreakers (1849, both: Louvre). For his choice of subjects from ordinary life, and more especially for his obstinacy and audacity, his work was reviled as offensive to prevailing politics and aesthetic taste. Enjoying the drama, Courbet rose to defend his work as the expression of his newfound political radicalism. His statements did nothing to recommend the work to his enemies.

In 1855, Courbet exhibited the vast Painter's Studio (Louvre). Attacked by academic painters, he set up his own pavilion where he exhibited 40 of his paintings and issued a manifesto on realism . While he continued to provoke the establishment by submitting works to the Salon that were twice rejected in the mid-1860s, within that decade he triumphed as the leader of the realist school. His influence became enormous, reaching its height with his rejection of the cross of the Legion of Honor offered him by Napoleon III in 1870. Under the Commune of Paris (1871), Courbet was president of the artists' federation and initially active in the Commune; he was later unfairly held responsible, fined, and imprisoned for the destruction of the Vendôme column. In 1873 he fled to Switzerland, where he spent his few remaining years in poverty. Although his aesthetic theories were not destined to prevail, his painting is greatly admired for its frankness, vigor, and solid construction.

Bibliography: See his letters, ed. by ten-Doesschate Chu (1992); J. Lindsay, Gustave Courbet: His Life and Art (1973) and P. ten-Doesschate Chu, The Most Arrogant Man in France: Gustave Courbet and the Nineteenth-Century Media Culture (2007); studies by T. J. Clark (1973), S. Faunce and L. Nochlin (1988), M. Fried (1990), and J. H. Rubin (1997).

Courbet, Gustave (1819–77) French painter, the leading exponent of realism. Largely self-taught, Courbet rejected traditional subject matter and instead painted peasant groups and scenes from life in Paris. His nudes, splendid in their richness of colour and textural contrast, shocked contemporary society. His controversial political activity forced him into exile in Switzerland in 1873. Courbet's rejection of both Romantic and Classical ideals prepared the way for Impressionism.

http://www.metmuseum.org; http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk; http://www.nga.gov

Courbet, Gustave. See MODERN ART.