The development of Realism

The Revolution of 1848 ushered in the Second Republic and a new liberal spirit that, for a brief while,
greatly affected the arts. The Salon held its exhibition not in the Louvre itself but in the adjoining
galleries of the Tuileries. Courbet exhibited there in 1849, and his early work was greeted with
considerable critical and public acclaim.

In 1849 he visited his family at Ornans to recover from his hectic lifestyle in Paris and, inspired again by
his native countryside, produced two of his greatest paintings: The Stonebreakers and Burial at Ornans.
Painted in 1849, The Stonebreakers is a realistic rendering of two figures doing physical labour in a
barren rural setting. The Burial at Ornans, from the following year, is a huge representation of a peasant
funeral, containing more than 40 life-size figures. Both works depart radically from the more controlled,
idealized pictures of either the Neoclassical or the Romantic school; they portray the life and emotions
not of aristocrats but of humble peasants, and they do so with a realistic urgency. The fact that Courbet
did not glorify his peasants but presented them boldly and starkly assaulted the prevailing conventions
of the art world.

Leader of the new school of Realism

Courbet, an intimate of many writers and philosophers of his day, including the poet Charles Baudelaire
and the social philosopher Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, became the leader of the new school of Realism,
which in time prevailed over other contemporary movements. One of the decisive elements in his
development of Realism was his lifelong attachment to the traditions and customs of his native
province, the Franche-Comté, and of his birthplace, Ornans, one of the most beautiful towns in the
province. After a brief visit to Switzerland, he returned to Ornans, and in late 1854 he began an
immense canvas, which he completed in six weeks: The Artist’s Studio, an allegory of all the influences
on Courbet’s artistic life, which are portrayed as human figures from all levels of society. Courbet
himself presides over all the figures with ingenuous conceit, working on a landscape and turning his back
to a nude model, a symbolic representation of academic tradition. When the painting was refused by
the jury for the 1855 Universal Exposition, Courbet, with the financial support of a friend, opened his
own pavilion of Realism to exhibit his works in a site close to the official exposition. The enterprise
failed; the painter Eugène Delacroix alone, in his journal, praised the audacity and talent of Courbet.

In 1856 Courbet visited Germany, where he was warmly welcomed by his fellow artists. Three years
later, at the age of 40 and still working in defiance of severe criticism in his own country, he was the
undisputed model for a new generation of painters who had turned away from the traditional schools of
painting, which they considered only barriers to artistic inspiration. Courbet worked in all genres. A lover
of women, he glorified the female nude in paintings of stunning warmth and sensuality. He executed
admirable portraits, but above all he celebrated the Franche-Comté, the forests, springs, rocks, and cliffs
of which were immortalized by his vision. In 1865 he set up his easel before the cliffs of Étretat,
Deauville, Trouville, and other resorts fashionable during the Second Empire. Carefully observing air
currents and storm skies, he successfully depicted the architecture of a tempest in a series of seascapes.
These pictures were an extraordinary achievement that amazed the world of art and opened the way for
Impressionism, which was to achieve an even greater sensuousness by reproducing the colour and light
reflected by an object rather than its strict linear shape.

Political activities of Gustave Courbet

The Franco-German War broke out in 1870, the Second Empire collapsed, and the Third Republic was
proclaimed. On March 18, 1871, the republican Paris Commune was established to fight the Germans in
France as well as to fight the Army of Versailles, which had remained loyal to Napoleon III and had
concluded an armistice with the Germans that the members of the Commune judged to be
dishonourable. Courbet, who had been recently elected president of the artists’ federation and was
charged with reopening the museums and organizing the annual Salon, took part in the revolutionary
activities of the Commune. Instead of opening the museums, he decided to protect the major public
monuments, especially the Sèvres porcelain factory and the palace at Fontainebleau, for Paris had been
under constant bombardment by the Germans. Alarmed by the excesses of the Commune, he resigned
May 2.

The Commune had voted to destroy the column in the Place Vendôme commemorating the Grand Army
of Napoleon Bonaparte, and it carried out the decision on May 16. But on May 28 the Commune was
crushed by the Army of Versailles, and on June 7 Courbet was arrested at the home of a friend. Because
he was thought to have been responsible for the demolition of the column, he was brought before a
military court. As he had often made known his disgust of the militarism represented by the monument,
he was charged with having been the instigator, although he had in no way participated in its
destruction. A scapegoat was needed, and Courbet was arbitrarily chosen, despite his protests and those
of the persons actually responsible for the demolition, who had fled to England. He was sentenced to six
months in prison, and, thanks to the intervention of Adolphe Thiers, head of the provisional government
of the French Republic, he was given a minimum fine of 500 francs. He served his sentence first at the
Sainte-Pélagie prison, and, when he became seriously ill, he was moved to a clinic near Paris. Once
freed, he hastened to Ornans in the hope of regaining his strength.

When Thiers resigned in 1872, the Bonapartist deputies reopened Courbet’s case and sued him for the
cost of rebuilding the column. His entire personal property and all his paintings were seized, and he was
fined 500,000 gold francs. Having no alternative but to leave France because he could not pay the fine,
he crossed the border into Switzerland on July 23, 1873, and settled in the small town of Fleurier. He set
to work again, but, feeling unsafe so close to France, he first went to Vevey and then to La Tour-de-Peilz,
where he bought an old inn, appropriately named the Bon-Port (“Safe Arrival”). There he died at the age
of 58, physically and morally exhausted.
Legacy