Gustave Courbet (1819-1877) was the leader of the Realist School and
the most controversial practioner of the style. Austere and direct, Courbet's
canvases of peasants and laborers reflected his strong political views
and social commitment. His first breakthrough image was A Burial at Ornans
(1849-50) which announced the Realist aesthetic. In this shocking painting,
Courbet portrayed ordinary people in an ordinary activity - a funeral
procession - on a monumental scale (22 feet long with 51 figures) usually
reserved for historic events and famous figures in history painting. Moreover,
the provincial working-class mourners, based on real citizens of Ornans,
were deemed by the public to be too ugly to be subjects of a work of art.
The work was conceived of, and received as, both an attack on bourgeois
art and a commentary on the politics of class at mid-century, for Courbet
borrowed the style and scale of high art to elevate the working classes
to a subject position. The fragmentation of the composition into three
discrete groups (the women on the right, the clergy on the left and the
bourgeoisie in the middle), the flatness of tone and palette (limited
to black and white punctuated with the red of the clerics) and its "deliberate
ugliness" all contributed to the critical and public disapproval
of this radical image.
Equally radical was Courbet's refusal to privilege any single element
or group in the painting. Rejecting hierarchical values, the painter opts
instead for a pictorial democracy, where everything is of equal importance.
There is no central focal point in the horizontal composition that concentrates
on the secular rather than spiritual aspects of death. Thus, Courbet's
image focuses neither on the dead nor on the afterlife, but on the mourners,
the community and the nature of their rituals. The priest, beadle and
choirboys are no less prosaic than the other citizens, all of whom have
concrete human identities. The unembellished faces, local costumes and
directness of presentation all indicate the influence of photography on
Realist painting. His Young Women from the Village was equally controversial
and the source of much mockery for its prosaic subject and unidealized
figures.
Courbet embarked on his most grandiose image - The PainterÕs Studio:
Interior of my studio; a real allegory determining a phase of the last
seven years of my life (1854-55) for the Exposition Universelle held in
Paris in 1855. The painting was rejected, so Courbet opened his own independent
"Pavillon du Réalisme," not far from the Universal Exposition,
to display his own works. This dense and difficult triptych allegorizes
the trajectory of his Realist career from 1848-1855 and he includes representations
of all aspects of his life and art in the 20 x 12 foot canvas. On the
left he included the external, political world, including soldiers, laborers,
hunters, and other figures from his art as well as Louis Napoleon (seated
with spaniels). On the right, in what he termed the interior or aesthetic
world, are found patrons, bohemians and artists, including Baudelaire
(sitting on the table reading) and Champfleury (seated). At center is
the artist at his easel, admired by a naked woman (allegory for art) and
a small boy (the future). His painting of a landscape signals a move away
from his overtly political canvases of the daily lives of peasants in
the countryside. In the decades to follow, Courbet's Realism focused on
hunting scenes (After the Hunt) and non-idealized female nudes (Woman
with a Parrot). He remained politically engaged throughout his life and
was active in the Paris Commune of 1871. Accused of organizing the demolition
of the Vendême Column, he was jailed after the overthrow of the
Commune and later spent four years in exile.
Courbet's Realism found a vocal champion in the author and critic Champfleury,
who helped to defend the painter and enunciate the new aesthetic. He insists
that Courbet "n'a rien inventé" and that in criticizing
the Enterrement à Ornans one criticizes the peasants themselves,
who do not resemble the Greek gods of Classical art. A "chef-d'oeuvre
du laid," Courbet's early masterpiece is seen by Champfleury as an
anti-academic tribute to the real people of France in the nineteenth century
and a "réhabilitation du moderne."