Painting. World artists. Gustave Courbet (1819-1877)

The most aggressive apostle of the new school was Gustave Courbet. Born in the bleak village of Ornans in the mountainous region of eastern France, he came to Paris determined to create a lasting effect on the art of the capital, not only through his devotion to concrete reality, but also through his study of the art of the past. Courbet was a strong republican and champion of working-class rights and ideas. Courbet wanted his art to embody his ideas concerning society. At the start Courbet was completely consistent. "The art of painting should consist only in the representation of objects which the artist can see and touch..." he declared; "I hold that the artists of the century are completely incapable of reproducing the things of a preceding or a future century... It is for this reason I reject history painting when applied to the past. History painting is essentially contemporary."

Courbet's paintings were concerned with events of his own time. The Stone Breakers, of 1849, fully embodied his artistic and social principles, and caused a scandal when it was exhibited at the Salon of 1850. A public accustomed to the grandiloquence of the Neo-classicists and the Romanticists did not understand such a direct and hard study of reality. Courbet depicted the dehumanising labour of breaking stones into gravel for road repairs, undertaken by an old man and a boy with perfect dignity. Proudhon, a Socialist writer, called it a parable from the Gospels. The simplicity of the relief-like composition is deeply Classical. Yet its objectivity betrays Courbet's own devotion to the new art of photography, which he practised as an amateur. The power of Courbet's compositions was matched by the work manliness of his methods. His paint was first laid on with the palette knife. When the knife-work was dry, he worked up the surface with effects of light and colour with a brush, but it is the underlying palette-knife construction that gives his figures their density and weight.

In the same Salon of 1850 Courbet showed A Burial at Ornans, which fulfilled his requirements for true history painting. The inescapable end of an ordinary inhabitant of the village is represented with sober realism. Accompanied by altar boys, pallbearers, and women the parish priest reads the Office for the Dead before the open grave, around which stand family and friends some with handkerchiefs to their eyes. The canvas, about twenty-two feet long, was so large that the artist could not step back in his studio to see the whole work. In a great S-curve in depth, the figures stand with the simple dignity of the Apostles in Masaccio's Tribute Money. Locked between the rocky escarpment above and the grave beneath, these people realise their destiny is bound to the earth, yet they seem to comprehend and to accept their fate. Each face is painted with all of Courbet's dignity and sculptural density recalling the prophets of Donatello. This is one of the strongest and noblest works of all French painting.
In 1855 Courbet's paintings were rejected by the Universal Exposition. These works included the Burial and a more recent programme work The Studio: A Real Allegory Concerning Seven Years of My Artistic Life, painted in 1854-55. A special shed for a large exhibition of Courbet's paintings, including the rejected works was constructed. The artist called this building The Pavilion of Realism. For the catalogue he wrote a preface setting forth the principles of his art. In The Studio the relationship between artist and sitters as seen by Velazquez and Goya is exactly reversed Instead of playing a subsidiary role at one side, the artist displays himself in the centre, at work on a completely visible landscape, similar to those that adorn the walls of the dim studio. A model who has just shed her clothes, probably representing Truth looks on approvingly, her figure is beautifully revealed in light. The group at the left remains obscure, but it comprises figures drawn from "society at its best, its worst, and its average," with whom the painter had come into contact. Few of the figures look at the artist; all are silent. Delacroix called the picture a masterpiece, reproaching the jury for having "refused one of the most remarkable works of our times."
When Courbet reached material success, something of the rude power of his early works vanished from his portraits of the French aristocracy.

After the revolution of 1870 Courbet joined the short-lived Paris Commune, and took part in the commission that decreed the dismantling of the Colonne Vendome. For this he was sentenced under the Third Republic to six months in prison, which he spent in painting still lifes of extraordinary clarity and simplicity and landscapes from photographs. Later he was charged a huge sum for rebuilding the monument, fled to Switzerland, and died in exile, his belongings were sold by the authorities to pay the debt.
 

Literature: Book "Western European art" A.P. Minyar-Belorucheva