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Text: after Georges Riat

Translation: Michael Locey

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ISBN: 978-1-78310-765-0

Georges Riat

Gustave Courbet

Contents

Introduction: Childhood and Youth in Ornans and Besançon

I. The Beginnings

Paris and the First Salons

The First Exhibitions in Paris

The Beginnings of Realism

The First Successes of Realism

Courbet’s First Successes

II. Glory

Courbet: the Centre of Controversy

From the Exposition universelle to the One-man Exhibition

Courbet between Success and Scandal

III. Decline

The Beginning of the End

The Case of The Woman with the Parrot

The Fall

The Arrest

Exile

Conclusion: Death of a Master

Chronology

List of Illustrations

1. Self-Portrait, c. 1850-1853.

Oil on canvas, 71.5 x 59 cm.

Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen.

Introduction: Childhood and
Youth in Ornans and Besançon

The artist Jean-Désiré-Gustave Courbet was born in Ornans on the 10th of June 1819. Most of Courbet’s biographers say that he was of farming stock, and was a farmer himself. The latter statement is wrong, while the former should be clarified. His father, Régis Courbet, was an important landowner. He owned an estate on a plateau, which although fragmented, as was often the case in Franche-Comté, spread over the communities of Flagey, Silley and Chantrans.

A letter from Max Buchon to Champfleury depicts Régis Courbet in a lively, picturesque way: “The father is much more idealistic, a constant talker and nature-lover, sober as an Arab, tall, long-legged, quite handsome in his youth, immensely affectionate, never knowing what time it is, never wearing out his clothes, a seeker of ideas and agricultural innovations, who invented his own special harrow, and who, in spite of the fact that he had a wife and daughters to support, farmed in a way that made him little profit.” The old folks in the area still recall that “improved” harrow, which destroyed the crops, as well as a certain carriage, with a fifth wheel on the back which held the food baskets for the hunt. These inventions and a few others in the same vein earned him the nickname, cudot, which in the local dialect described someone possessed by pipe-dreams. He was on the whole an excellent fellow who, had he been more practical, would have let out his lands to sharecroppers and lived the life of a country squire.

Courbet’s mother, Sylvie Oudot, was a relative of the jurist Oudot, a professor of law in Paris, and was quite different. A hard-working woman, constantly busy patching up the damage from her husband’s blunders and hare-brained schemes, she was the one who actually ran the farm, while still found the time to bring up her children and relax in the evenings by playing the flute.

Gustave was the firstborn. After him came three daughters, whom the artist quite often included within his paintings, most notably in Young Women from the Village. They were the somewhat sickly Zélie, who played the guitar; the overly sentimental Zoé, who had a fiery imagination; and Juliette, the youngest, lively and devout, and who at an early age fell in love with the piano. Added to this family circle were Grandfather and Grandmother Oudot, objects of Courbet’s constant affection, so the artist grew up in an atmosphere which was much more bourgeois than peasant, though not so bourgeois that the young man was deprived of the wonders of nature, and not so peasant that there was any question of his becoming anything but an educated professional.

At first glance, it is easy to see the imprint of both nature and nurture upon Courbet’s personality. His Grandfather Jean-Antoine Oudot, a raging revolutionary of 1793 and fervent follower of Voltaire, taught him by example to espouse republican, anticlerical ideas; his father’s outrageous behaviour explains some of his own, as well as his pride, vanity, and pursuit of glory; from his mother he received, in spite of appearances, a refinement and thoughtfulness, examples of which are plentiful throughout his life, but which he kept carefully hidden from all but those closest to him. His long ancestry of wine growers and farmers also made him a man of the soil, a terrien, with all that this word implies in terms of health, robustness, perseverance, determined possessiveness and occasionally a certain vulgarity, along with an uncompromising frankness and a roughness of character. In short, he inherited that rare flame of genius that made it possible for him to become one of the greatest artists who ever lived.

In 1831, his parents sent him to the lower seminary in Ornans, which prepared pupils not only for the upper seminary, but also for secular careers. Courbet did not do well there, being unable to take an interest in Latin, Greek or mathematics and frequently playing hooky. He was known for his skill in chasing butterflies and his knowledge of the surrounding trails, so much so that he was picked to be the guide on Sunday outings.

If Courbet paid little attention to classical studies, it was a different story when it came to drawing, and even painting, which soon began to interest him. From that moment on his art teacher, “Father Beau,” had no pupil who was more attentive or serious. It was not long before the pupil knew as much as his teacher. Mademoiselle Juliette Courbet religiously kept albums filled with his drawings; studies of flowers, profiles, heads, sketches of landscapes, fantasies, all of which bear witness to his fervour for drawing. Such a calling was not at all to the liking of Courbet’s father, who wanted his son to study at the École Polytechnique. Therefore in October 1837 he sent him to study philosophy at the royal secondary school in Besançon, thinking that boarding school would straighten him out. But in fact the opposite occurred, and the many letters from the son to his parents show how poorly he adjusted to this existence which was so new to him.

He found the daily schedule too busy. If only the living conditions had been decent! In the morning they gave him just one piece of bread. At noon, it was a tiny ladleful of soup, a plate of fried potatoes or cabbage or some other vegetable “always boiled,” and an apple or a pear, with “a little glass of wine, without much colour to it,” the whole lot poorly presented, and with more often than not “a strange taste or odour” about it. In the evening, he was given a main dish, salad, and an apple, and he was so rushed that it was not unusual for him to leave with half his meal in his pocket. The beds were small and hard; it did no good to pile all his clothes over him, he was still cold, and he begged them to send him a blanket. Such was the unflattering picture that he painted of the school. He ended with these sad yet hopeful words; “I can’t wait to see Ornans and all of you; that’s understandable as it’s the first time I’ve left home!”

His resignation was only on the surface, and the letters that followed soon showed him to be in a state of rebellion. The father remained intractable, and, despairing of ever convincing him, Courbet temporarily ceased putting his recriminations into writing. To console himself, he drew scenes of Ornans like those he had sent to his older cousin Oudot in Paris, which the latter’s wife had put into her album, resolving to later check whether the likeness was true.

After the Easter holiday, they set Courbet up in a little room on the main street of Besançon, in the house where Victor Hugo happened to have been born in 1802. This was during the same year (1838) that the great poet presented Ruy Blas, and one can only imagine how his glory haunted the dreams of the young student. Glad of his refound freedom, Courbet began to work on his mathematics with a talented teacher by the name of Meusy, and to attend courses at the Academy where Messieurs Perron, in philosophy, and Pérennès, in literature, were attracting crowds. Unfortunately, while he had good intentions when they were not backed up by inclination; the passion for drawing had seized him once again heart and soul.

2. The Bridge at Nahin, c. 1837.

Oil on paper mounted on canvas, 17 x 26 cm.

Institut Gustave-Courbet, Ornans.

3. The Loue Valley in Stormy Weather, c. 1849.

Oil on canvas, 54 x 65 cm.

Musée des Beaux-Arts, Strasbourg.

There were too many opportunities drawing him back to his former predilections. A painter named Jourdain lived in the same house, and, as mediocre as he was, Courbet quickly became very interested in his work. In addition, the landlord’s son, Arthaud, a student of Monsieur Flajoulot, director of the School of Fine Arts of Besançon, often took him along to his classes. Courbet didn’t hide this; “Lately,” he wrote to his parents, “I have taken up a kind of drawing which I could do very well at, if my financial means allowed me to do it more regularly. It is lithography.”

Among his first lithographs was The Bridge at Nahin, which he was to paint later with a skill neither apparent nor foreseen in his earlier work. Others were illustrations for Essais poétiques, par Max B…, vignettes par Gust. C... (Poetic Essays, by Max B…, with illustrations by Gust. C…) published in Besançon in 1839. The poet Max Buchon, who came from Salins, thus launched his first book, with the assistance of the person who was to become one of his best friends. Buchon was later the author of Matachin, a collection of poetry and stories from Franche-Comté written with a saucy realism, who had the good fortune to impress Buloz, the editor of the Revue des Deux Mondes.

Yet it was painting which called out to Courbet. Little by little, he forsook the path to the Academy for that leading to Art School. There he continued to meet, with increasing pleasure, the excellent Flajoulot who, although less modest than Father Beau, treated him with as much kindness. He was a follower of David, and called himself the king of drawing. It was not long before he nicknamed his pupil the king of colour. He gave Courbet a solid foundation in drawing; the artist’s stroke is clean, precise, delicate and expressive, and it was with great skill that his pencil, occasionally highlighted with firmly applied colours, analysed the life models at Flajoulot’s studio. Courbet’s drawings of eyes, legs, hands, feet, muscles, noses, ears, women’s torsos and breasts, soft and full, leave no doubt in this regard.

At about the same time Courbet did some small primitive paintings that do not show the same originality. These are landscapes from Ornans or the surrounding area; lively, grey, with blue skies, small in size and minute in detail, with a touching degree of good intentions, effort, and childishness. These include The Grape Harvest under the Roche du Mont, Chalimand Fields, Grandfather Oudot’s House, The Mill Road, The Entrance to Ornans, The Loue Valley in Stormy Weather and Montgesoye Islands, with poplars, willows on a hillock, and the artist, observing the scene, with his gun under his arm …

The inventory of all these works makes it obvious that the study of philosophy was gradually being abandoned. Did Courbet pass or fail the examination that he was studying for with so little interest? It would seem that he did not even sit it. He went home to Ornans for the summer holidays, and brought his father round to the idea of letting him go to Paris under the pretext of studying law.

Before he left, he delighted in exploring his beloved countryside, engraving its image forever on his memory. He gazed upon it once again with a filial affection, his sense of observation and his emotions quickened by the knowledge that he was soon to leave it. He carried these scenes of nature away with him, both the sweet and rough elements drawn and painted on his heart; as yet unaware of the immense importance they would have in his future artistic life.

4. Portrait of the Artist, known as
Mad with Fear, 1848 (?).Oil on paper

mounted on canvas, 60.5 x 50.5 cm.

Nasjonalmuseet for Kunst Arkitektur og Design, Oslo.

I. The Beginnings

Paris and the First Salons

The First Exhibitions in Paris

However excited Courbet must have been on his arrival in Paris, one can easily imagine that it was not long before pangs of homesickness set in. He tried to improve his spirits by visiting compatriots from Franche-Comté, either relatives or friends, who consoled him as best they could. Relations with his cousin Oudot, the professor at the School of Law, soon became strained; he was no doubt disappointed that the young man should so quickly give up a career in the law for painting. Courbet’s life was humble and uncomplicated. He seems to have taken lodgings for quite some time in a hotel, located at number 28 in the rue de Bucy, but the place was short on creature comforts, and Courbet wrote urgently to ask that sheets, a blanket, a pad and a mattress be sent from Ornans.

Soon, in a letter of the 24th of December 1842, he announced to his parents that he had finally found a studio, at 89, rue de la Harpe; “It is a fine room with a wooden floor and a high ceiling, which will be warm in winter; the studio is upstairs, on the courtyard, and has two windows, one looking out on the courtyard, and the other in the roof.”

From then on he spent long and fruitful hours visiting the galleries of the Louvre. Francis Wey relates in his Mémoires inédits (Unpublished Memoirs) that the fine fellow of a painter, François Bonvin, whose conscientious talent has not yet been properly appreciated, acted as a guide for his young friend.

Courbet was instinctively drawn to the masters who best exemplified the as yet unfocused ideas developing within him. He had no use for the Italian school. Later, Théophile Silvestre, recording a conversation that he had just had with the master, said that Courbet called Titian and Leonardo da Vinci “frauds”. As for Raphael, he conceded that he might have done a “few portraits that were interesting,” the works nevertheless “show no thought,” and that is why, no doubt, continued Courbet, “our so-called idealists adore them.” It is quite likely that he did actually say these things. But one must not give too much importance to these witticisms, which smack of an artist out to shock the critics, who were always the painter’s bête noir, and the bourgeoisie for whom he showed a profound scorn, as did many artists of his time.

In his disapproval of the Italian school, he made an exception for the Venetians; Veronese, and among others, Domenico Feti and Canaletto. Did he study the techniques of the Bolognese artists: the Carracci, Caravaggio or Guercino? Everything points to their influence on him having been exaggerated. He particularly admired, and studied, the great realists such as Ribera, Zurbarán, Velázquez, Van Ostade, Holbein, and, first and foremost, Rembrandt, who “beguiles the intelligent, but bewilders and overwhelms the slow-witted.”

5. Portrait of the Artist, known as
The Desperate Man, 1844-1845.

Oil on canvas, 45 x 54 cm. Private collection.

From this period and these preoccupations date Head of a Young Girl, Florentine Pastiche, executed in the Florentine manner; a Fantastical Landscape with Anthropomorphic Rocks, after the Flemish; a Portrait of the Artist, in the manner of the Venetians and copies of the works of Rembrandt, Franz Hals, Van Dyck, and Velázquez.

When not at the Louvre, Courbet was hard at work in his studio, painting studies or portraits. He also went frequently to the atelier de Suisse, where he drew from life models without supervision, and where he did a great many studies which he used later in his paintings of nudes.

It has been said that Courbet was a student of the very academic Baron von Steuben and Auguste Hesse. In fact, he went only three or four times to the former’s studio, and then only to make fun of what was being done there. As for the latter, Courbet himself refused to admit such a relationship; fundamentally, he had had only himself for a teacher, and the most abiding effort in his life was devoted to preserving his independence.

His production during these first four years in Paris is varied and contradictory, revealing the conflict of ideas going on in his mind, and through which slowly and unconsciously his individual aesthetic was being developed. In the “classical” style, there is Ruins Beside a Lake (1839), Monk in a Cloister (1840), both of which are fairly mediocre compositions; Man Saved from Love by Death, an allegorical composition showing Death carrying off a woman whom Courbet himself, on the other side, is trying to hold back, an “amorous whimsy” which the author made fun of and later painted over, and a very affected Odalisque, which he painted after reading Victor Hugo. There are also landscapes, which already reveal qualities of observation and colour. These include Landscape with the Roche Founèche, with the Salins road at the bottom, and Ornans huddled on the bank of the river Loue; Views of the Forest of Fontainebleau, executed after a brief visit there in 1841; Wooded Landscape in Winter (1842) and Hunting Blind, “a studio landscape,” as he himself called this canvas, to ridicule this illogical practice (1843).

But it was his portraits that most clearly foretold the great artist to come. In particular, the portraits of his sisters. From this period on, he also used himself as a model. He has been much derided in this regard, and Théophile Silvestre, in the Catalogue de la Galerie Bruyas, went so far as to say that the soul of Narcissus lived on in Courbet. To be sure he viewed himself favourably, but was he not naturally led to doing his own portrait to save the expense of a paid model, particularly since he did not yet have commissions for paid portraits? His Small Portrait of the Artist with a Black Dog of 1842 earned him the honour of being accepted for the salon of 1844, an important date which, although not quite the end of his early period, nevertheless marked the end of his first step towards fame.

“I have finally been accepted at the Exhibition,” Courbet wrote to his parents in March of 1844, “which makes me most happy.” In a letter to his grandfather he announced that his painting was displayed in the salon d’honneur, “a placement reserved for the best paintings of the Exhibition.” He added that if it had been larger, he would have won a medal. When it was displayed again at the “Centennale” Exhibition in 1900, the precision, assurance, and skill in the brushstrokes, qualities not often found in the early works of artists, were there for all to admire. He started back to work with renewed vigour and produced a great deal.

6. Portrait of Grandfather Oudot, 1843.

Oil on canvas, 55 x 46 cm.

Musée Gustave-Courbet, Ornans.

7. Portrait of Paul Ansout, 1844.

Oil on canvas, 81 x 65.2 cm.

Château-Musée, Dieppe.

In February of 1845 he wrote that he had not stopped for a single hour, including Sundays and holidays; consequently he was exhausted in body and mind, and unable to go on for the time being. He had just sent five paintings to the Exhibition. A letter received in Ornans on the 22nd of March 1845 states that he had only one painting accepted: Guittarrero. This portrait, in spite of its real merit, is inferior to that of the previous Salon. It is less realistic and an obvious compromise between what was happening around Courbet and what he himself was feeling vaguely and was soon to bring forth without ambiguity or hesitation. Several canvases from this period (1844-1845) are as worthy of attention as Guittarrero. Lovers in the Country, Sentiment of Youth is a highly poetic painting. The artist has put himself in the picture from the shoulders up in left profile, his long hair blowing in the wind. Against him leans a very pretty girl, with a delicate and poetic profile tilted toward her right shoulder, her pale skin emphasised by her blonde hair cascading over her temples and ears. It would appear that the young woman is the Joséphine who was for so long the painter’s model and mistress. Having seen this painting it is impossible to maintain the idea that Courbet was incapable of sentimentality. This work, as well as the painting entitled The Hammock, foretold the great master that Courbet would later become.

Another painting, entitled The Prisoner of the Dey of Algiers but sometimes incorrectly called Job, is another example of Courbet’s hesitations during this period. An old man with a long beard sits in his prison half-naked, a blanket thrown over his head and body. Near him is a jug, and he is pulling the blanket down over his legs in a pose that the classical painters would not have disowned.

Is The Wounded Man from this period? The painter is shown full face, with a bloody wound in his chest. His face is pale and bloodless, his lips without colour, as if he were on the point of dying. The dark landscape increases the horror of this tragic moment. The catalogue from Courbet’s private exhibition, at the Pont de l’Alma in 1867, included this notation after the title; “(Paris. 1844). Rejected for the salons of 1844, 1845, 1846 and 1847 by the jury made up of members of the Institut.” However the catalogue from the Courbet exhibition at the École des Beaux-Arts in 1882, written by Castagnary, disagreed strongly with this date. According to him, “The free and supple technique of this painting shows that it is not the work of the artist’s early years; it is from 1854. The catalogue of the painter’s first private exhibition, in 1855, attests to that; to accept 1844 would be to accept that it was painted at the same time as Lovers in the Country, Sentiment of Youth and Man with a Leather Belt, Portrait of the Artist, which would be a step backward.” However, this opinion by Castagnary may not be entirely correct; it is quite possible that The Wounded Man is the “portrait of a man, life size,” mentioned in the letter of February, 1845. Nor is it proven that the Lovers in the Country, Sentiment of Youth and Man with a Leather Belt, Portrait of the Artist are in any way inferior to The Wounded Man. This latter work is very close to the other two in terms of inspiration, and it suffices to compare the two faces in Lovers in the Country and in The Wounded Man to see that they are similar. What may have led Castagnary astray is that the artist probably revised his work about 1854, in view of the 1855 Exhibition, possibly touching it up a bit. There seems little doubt that it was composed in 1844.

All these paintings indicate a difficult struggle, one which was becoming bolder and bolder. “In the coming year,” he wrote on the 10th of March 1845, “I must do a large painting which will definitely get me recognised for what I truly am, for I want all or nothing. All those little paintings are not the only thing that I can do... I want to do large-scale painting. One thing is certain, that within five years, I must have a name in Paris; that is what I strive for. It’s hard to get there, I know; there are not many, and out of thousands there may be only one who breaks through. To move faster, I only lack one thing, and that’s money in order to boldly execute what I have in mind.”

So he was very pleased when a dealer from Amsterdam, who liked his work very much, declared that he had found nothing in the various studios of Paris better than what Courbet was doing. He bought two of his paintings for 420 francs, commissioned another, and assured him that he would make him famous in Holland. At last he was free, for the moment, from the “boring portraits, and women who insist on fair complexions, in spite of everything.”

Audaciously, to show that he could paint in the grand manner, he attacked a canvas that was “eight feet high by ten wide”. This was a “mighty work”, because he wanted to finish it before leaving for Ornans, or at least to be well enough along for it to be dry and easy to paint over after the vacation.

However, his own enthusiasm wore him out fairly quickly, and he decided to return home. The little town provided the happier company of his childhood friends, the musician Promayet and the jolly Urbain Cuenot. One can only imagine the good times had by this band of hearty fellows, whether they set out to go hunting, fishing, hiking, or wooing the ladies.

Back in Paris, Courbet briefly set aside his grand ideas. In those winter days, in fact, he had neither enough time nor enough light “to work seriously at it”. Moreover, he would have had to be more certain of selling this type of painting; what could one do with it otherwise? However, he took up his work again with his “usual determination; come what may, double or nothing!”

He began to show signs of discouragement. In January 1846, he stated that “there’s nothing harder in the world than making art, particularly when no one understands it. Women want portraits without shadows, men want to be dressed up in their Sunday best; there’s no way out. To earn money with things like that, you’d be better off walking on a treadmill. At least then you would not be abdicating your convictions.”

In March, he sent eight paintings to the Salon that had “already received much praise,” and he awaited the opening with great impatience. He would care very little, he said, about the opinion of the members of the jury “if that weren’t so important for one’s reputation”. Otherwise, rejection of his works would merely have proved that he did not think like them, and that would have been a compliment to him. Here we have another glimpse of the rebel that had emerged at school, and which he would become as an artist. His judges, through excessive haste, self-centredness or lack of caring, missed the opportunity to recognise his efforts, and themselves encouraged him to become their own formidable enemy.

Once again, the tide was against him and only his portrait was accepted. Obviously there was “ill will” against him. The judges were “a bunch of old fools who had never been capable of anything and were out to stifle the younger generation who could walk all over them”. Being rejected by them was therefore an honour.

8. Small Portrait of the
Artist with a Black Dog, 1842.

Oil on canvas, 27.5 x 22 cm.

Musée municipal de Pontarlier, Pontarlier.

9. Portrait of the Artist, known as Courbet with

the Black Dog, 1842. Oil on canvas, 46.5 x 55.5 cm.

Petit Palais - Musée des beaux-arts de la ville de Paris, Paris.