'', 1869, oil on canvas, ,
Musée des beaux-arts de Lyon 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 [are] basically 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. 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 '' 1849, oil on canvas, first exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1850, destroyed during World War II. 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 1854 painting,
The Gleaners. During World War II, from 13 to 15 February 1945, the
Allies continuously
bombed the city of
Dresden, Germany. German troops hastily loaded artworks from Dresden's galleries and museums onto trucks.
The Stone Breakers was
destroyed, along with 153 other paintings, when a transport vehicle moving the pictures to the
Königstein Fortress, near Dresden, was bombed by Allied forces.
A Burial at Ornans '', 1849–50, oil on canvas, ,
Musée d'Orsay, Paris. Exhibition at the 1850–1851
Paris Salon created an "explosive reaction" and brought Courbet instant fame. 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. 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 political 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'' '', 1855, , oil on canvas,
Musée d'Orsay, Paris In 1855, Courbet submitted fourteen paintings for exhibition at the
Salon of 1855, part of 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''. 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.
Seascapes While Courbet's seascapes, painted during his many visits to the northern coast of France in the late 1860s, were decidedly less controversial than his salon submissions, they furthered his contributions (willing or otherwise) to realism with their emphasis on both the beauty and danger of the natural world. There is a distinct range in the tones of this period with
The Calm Sea (1869) depicting the serenity of the receded tide, and
The Sailboat (c. 1869) showing a sailboat wrestling with violent tides.
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 ==