Gustave Courbet

Gustave Courbet, The Stone Breakers, 1849

Unlike fellow Realist Jean-François Millet, who was known for depicting more idealised, hale and hearty rural workers, Gustave Courbet depicted road menders wearing ripped and tattered clothing in his painting, The Stone Breakers.

This is not meant to be a heroic painting: it is meant to be an accurate account of the deprivation that was a common feature of mid 19th century French rural life.

Courbet wanted to show what was really occurring at the time, unlike the popular paintings which generally idealised the middle and upper classes. In this monumental painting (it was 1.65 m x 2.57 m) he painted a scene he had witnessed of two men breaking stones beside the road. He told his friends the art critic Francis Wey and 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. I told them to come to my studio the next morning.”*

The two faceless stone breakers in Courbet’s painting are set against a low hill common in the rural French town of Ornan, where the artist had been raised and continued to spend much of his time.

Courbet has used the difference in stone breakers’ ages to symbolise the cycle of poverty, and he has ‘cast light’ on their plight by placing them in strong light across the foreground of the painting, with the shadow of the hills behind them and only a small patch of blue in the upper right.

But see how our eye is then drawn from the patch of sky down through the long hammer back towards the endeavours of the older stone breaker, and then across his backward facing leg to the younger man. We are back to the central subjects of the work – they dominate the work no matter where we look.

However, Courbet has carefully added details to the painting so we know a little more about their lives – for example, their clothes are clearly tattered and ill fitting. We can see a cooking pot, a loaf of bread and a spoon on the left, sitting on an old cloth – so that we know there is little respite from their day’s work. On the right we see a basket to carry debris, with a scythe lying on the rocks between the workers, so we can assume that as well as breaking the stones, the labourers are clearing the land.

With his forearm exposed and his muscles appearing taut, we get a sense that that basket of rocks being held by the younger man is very, very heavy. We can also assume from the light and the hat being pulled low over the older man’s face that they are working in the heat.

There is nothing idyllic about this scene.

Like Millet, Courbet has used a very limited palette – it is only the small amount of the blue/grey and orange which bring relief from the muted earthy colours.

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Works such as these by Courbet prompted accusation of political associations, but the artist’s actual relationship with politics was complex. He called himself a “republican by birth” but didn’t take up arms during the 1848 Revolution (just prior to painting of the Stone Breakers), adhering to his pacifist beliefs. However, on the eve of the Paris Commune of 1871 he played an active role in the political and artistic life of this short-lived socialist government. With the demise of the Commune, Courbet was arrested and sentenced to six months imprisonment for his involvement in the destruction of the Vendôme Column, a symbol of Napoleonic authority.

He was a complex man labelling himself the “proudest and most arrogant man in France“. On one hand living a highly fashionable life, and on the other being a leader of the Realist movement through his commitment to painting everyday subjects drawn from modern life. (You get a sense of his arrogance from an early self portrait and another of his paintings, Good Day Monsieur Courbet, 1854- Courbet is on the right)

Gustave Courbet - Self-Portrait — Gustave Courbet – Self-Portrait

Gustave Courbet Good Day Monsieur Courbet, 1854

Unfortunately The Stonebreakers was a casualty of war: it was destroyed during World War II, along with 154 other pictures, when a transport vehicle moving the pictures to the castle of Königstein near Dresden was bombed by Allied forces in February 1945.

* as quoted on Wikipedia; Masanès, Fabrice 2006, p. 31

This short story is a short except from my e-course Introduction to Modern European Art in which you will discover the history of art from Romanticism through to Abstract Art.

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot Young Girl Reading c1868

Young Girl Reading by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot is, I think, a beautiful example of a Realist painting from the 1800s.

Until the end of the 19th century the term Realism meant observing the world in its natural form. It was a representation of the external world as it was actually seen and experienced.

The Realists were responding to the political and social upheaval in Europe in the early part of the century. They rejected what they perceived to be the artificiality of both Classicism and Romanticism. Instead they presented a non-escapist, democratic and empirical view of life as it existed around them, far removed from the heroic and idealised paintings such as Liberty Leading the People by Eugéne Delacroix.

They painted ordinary people leading their everyday lives, conscientiously reproducing what had been largely ignored aspects of contemporary life and society. In particular they focused on the physical settings, material circumstance and living conditions of the middle and lower classes, which until this time were not seen as worthy subjects for academic art. Landscapes were also popular subjects.

The natural world was seen as a place of worship by poets and artists alike. However, realist pictures of working men and women going about their business could be distinctly ordinary. Many viewers criticised such pictures as lacking in poetry and imagination, while other critics applauded them as having a more democratic form of art in keeping with the times.

Although realistic paintings were not characterised by a single style, they were often infused with a robustness and energy conveyed through bold lines, strong tonal contrasts, broad handling of paint and a sombre palette.

Jean-Louis-Ernest Meissonier, for example, was interested in faithfully reproducing heroic scenes, such as major battles, in minute detail. He also had a particular interest in both the 17th and 18th Centuries, so many of his genre paintings were of people from that time.

Gustave Courbet, on the other hand, was as an avant-garde painter, who wanted to represent ordinary people living ordinary lives, without the sense of the heroic or of romanticism. As might be expected, this approach led to a great deal of criticism, as it was not considered ‘high art’.

Jean François Millet also sought to represent rural life and rural workers, but can be viewed as making more of a political or social comment about the injustice towards the poor at the time.

Although Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot painted a number of portraits, he is largely remembered for his landscapes. He was particularly influenced by the realist Barbizon School in France which had a strong focus on tonal qualities, colour, loose brushwork, and softness of form. His style influenced the Impressionists who followed.

In my next few blogs I will discuss works by each of these artists.

This blog is just a short excerpt from my art history e-course, Introduction to Modern European Art which is designed for adult learners and students of art history.

This interactive program covers the period from Romanticism right through to Abstract Art, with sections on the Bauhaus and School of Paris, key Paris exhibitions, both favourite and less well known artists and their work, and information about colour theory and key art terms. Lots of interesting stories, videos and opportunities to undertake exercises throughout the program.

If you’d like to see some of the Australian artwork you’ll find in my gallery, scroll down to the bottom of the page. You’ll also find many French works on paper and beautiful fashion plates from the early 1900s by visiting the gallery.