Welcome back to the Deep Dive. Today we're jumping
into the really turbulent world of 19th century
French art. And we're focusing on one man who
basically threw a bomb into the middle of it
all. Gustave Courbet. Right. Jean -Désiré Gustave
Courbet. The ultimate art rebel, you could say.
Absolutely. Not just content with painting things
as they were, he seemed determined to, well...
shock everyone and maybe even change the world
while he was at it. He really was born in 1819,
died 1877. And he's not just a realist painter.
He's pretty much the founder and leader of the
realism movement. And his whole approach was
radical for the time, wasn't it? He just flat
out rejected what came before. Totally. He turned
it back on the, you know, the emotional drama
of romanticism, the classical myths of neoclassicism
and definitely the rigid rules of the French
Academy. So looking through the sources on him,
it's clear this wasn't just about style. It felt
political, almost like a social statement. Oh,
completely. His mantra was basically paint only
what you can see. No angels, no angel gods, just
the reality in front of him. And through that
reality, he made these incredibly bold statements
about society, about politics. He was directly
challenging the French Empire. Exactly. So our
mission today really is to unpack that. We'll
look at his life story, how his background maybe
fueled that defiance. Then dive into those huge
controversial paintings that really defined realism.
Right. And his political life, which got incredibly
intense during the Paris Commune. Leading to
his exile, tragically. Yeah, and then his legacy,
which is fascinating. It connects in surprising
ways to movements like Cubism, even. It's amazing
how independent he was. That spirit really paved
the way for later artists, didn't it? Like the
Impressionists. You could argue they wouldn't
have had the freedom they did without Courbet
breaking down those doors first. He forced the
art world to look at, well, ordinary life. Workers,
peasants, the dirt under their feet. Instead
of just idealized history or myths. Precisely.
He brought art down to earth quite literally.
So let's start at the beginning. Where did this
savage realist, as some called him, come from?
Okay, so he was born in Ornans, 1819. It's this
rural town, eastern France. And right from the
start, you see this kind of... rebellious streak
in his family background. Yeah, the sources mentioned
his family was anti -monarchical. His mother's
father actually fought in the French Revolution.
So that spirit of independence, maybe even a
bit anti -authoritarian, it was kind of baked
in early on. Seems like it. And when he heads
off to Paris in 1839, ostensibly to study law,
he pretty quickly pivots to art, but again, on
his own term. Right. He spends a little time
in a couple of studios, Dubin and Hesse's, but
apparently he just couldn't stand the formal
academic training. No, his real education was
self -directed. He basically skipped the official
art school, the École des Beaux -Arts, and instead
spent his time in the Louvre. Copying the masters
directly, that seems key. It really is. He wasn't
learning sterile techniques from plaster casts.
He was looking hard at painters like the Spanish
masters, Flemish painters, Rembrandt, Halls.
Artists known for depicting real life. real people
textures exactly masters of observation and studying
them seems to have really cemented his idea that
artists should paint the life around them the
world they could actually see and touch you can
sort of see that transition happening in his
early works right some of those self -portraits
are still quite romantic oh yeah like self -portrait
with black dog or the desperate man very theatrical
very emotionally charged he's playing a role
but then after he travels especially to the Netherlands
and Belgium in the mid -1840s. Right, around
1846 -47. That's when he seems to fully commit
to shedding those literary imagined themes and
focusing purely on observed reality. He saw how
Rembrandt and Halls painted their world. And
then comes his first big break, right, 1849 at
the Salon. Yes, after dinner at Ornan's. It's
a picture of his friends just hanging out after
a meal. Very undramatic, very real. And he wins
a gold medal. And the state actually buys it.
Which was huge! But the really crucial thing,
the detail that unlocks so much for him was what
that gold medal meant procedurally. Ah, this
is that loophole, isn't it? Exactly. If you won
a gold medal back then, your future submissions
to the salon were exempt from the jury. you were
automatically in. Wow. So no more rejection slips
from the official gatekeepers. For a critical
period, yes. He had this artistic carte blanche
until they changed the rules in 1857. So for
almost a decade. He could basically exhibit whatever
he wanted, no matter how shocking or unconventional.
And believe me, he used that freedom. He unleashed
realism onto an art world that was just not ready.
OK, so let's pin down what his realism actually
was, because it wasn't just about accurate drawing,
right? Not at all. The sources are clear. It
wasn't the smooth, idealized perfection of neoclassicism,
nor was it the heightened emotion and drama of
romanticism. It was grittier. Definitely grittier,
more physical. Technically, he often used paint
really thickly, the impasto technique, sometimes
applied with a palette knife, not just a brush.
Giving it that rough texture. Yeah, a real sense
of substance, of matter. It looked almost unfinished
to eyes used to the polished surfaces of academic
painting. He wanted to show the roughness of
nature, the harshness of life, not smooth it
over. And then there's the subject matter. That
was just as radical. Absolutely. He completely
ignored the official hierarchy of genres. You
know, history painting, big scenes from the Bible,
mythology, ancient history that was considered
the highest form of art. Everything else was
sort of second tier. Genre scenes, portraits,
landscapes. Right. Courbet basically said, forget
ancient history. An artist can only truly paint
their own time. So he turns his attention to.
To the people and places around him in Ornans
and Paris. Peasants, laborers, the local middle
class, landscapes, subjects the Academy considered
vulgar or trivial. But by painting them, especially
on a large scale, he was elevating them, wasn't
he? Making a statement. Precisely. He treated
ordinary people and ordinary life with the seriousness
and monumentality previously reserved for gods
and kings. That act alone was inherently political.
Okay, so that brings us right to those monumental
canvases that caused such an uproar, the ones
that really announced his arrival. Let's start
with the Stonebreakers from 1849. Yeah, often
called the first of his truly great defining
works. And the story behind it is pure Corbet.
He just saw these guys on the road? Pretty much.
He saw two men, one old, one young, doing this
absolutely brutal back -breaking work, smashing
rocks for road gravel near Ornans. He didn't
idealize them at all. He brought them into the
studio, right? Painted them as they were. Exactly.
And he told his friends, Francis Way and Chamfleury,
something like, it's rare to find such a complete
picture of poverty, so I got the idea for a painting
right then and there. The radical thing was,
well, a couple of things, right? First, they're
anonymous. Their faces are hidden or turned away.
They aren't individuals so much as representatives
of a class of exploited labor. And second, the
size. The size. He painted these poor anonymous
guys on a huge canvas, the kind of scale usually
reserved for a major historical event or a religious
scene. So he's saying this grinding poverty,
this labor, is as significant as a battle or
a coronation. That's the message. And people
got it. Socialist thinkers like Puthon saw it
immediately as this powerful image of peasant
life, almost an icon. It's just devastating that
the painting itself is gone. It really is. Destroyed
in 1945 during the bombing of Dresden while it
being moved for safety. A huge loss for art history.
Its destruction kind of underscores how potent
and sometimes dangerous politically charged art
can be. If Stonebreakers was a shock, what about
a burial at Ornans? That sounds like it landed
like a bomb. Oh, it was an earthquake, 1849 to
1850. And even bigger than Stonebreakers, we're
talking 10 feet high by 22 feet wide. Massive.
And the subject, just a funeral in his hometown.
Exactly, the funeral of his own granduncle. But
instead of hiring models or stylizing the scene,
he used the actual townspeople of Ornans, dozens
of them. Just lined up, looking. Well, looking
like real people at a funeral, I guess. Pretty
much. Some look bored, some look serious, some
maybe a bit tipsy. There's no central focus,
no dramatic outpouring of grief. It's just this
slice of provincial life, warts and all. And
the critics and the public. They were absolutely
outraged, appalled. They expected grand tragedy,
noble suffering, you know, the usual conventions
of a historical painting, which is the scale
he used. And Corbet gave them... Ornans? He gave
them Ornans. Dark, somber landscape. No beautiful
people, just ordinary folks. The composition
itself is radical. There's a long horizontal
line like a freeze. It refuses to create a hierarchy.
Everyone's just sort of... Someone famously described
it as being like an upstart in dirty boots crashing
a genteel party. That captures the reaction perfectly.
They hated the subject matter, the ugliness,
the dark palette, the sheer audacity of putting
this mundane event on such a heroic scale. But
Corbain knew exactly what he was doing. He had
that famous quote about it. Yes. He declared,
point blank, burial at Ornans was in reality
the burial of romanticism. Wow. Talk about throwing
down the gauntlet. Absolutely. And it worked.
He became instantly famous. Or notorious, depending
on who you ask. People were calling him a genius,
but also a terrible socialist, a savage. Right.
And he leaned into that persona, didn't he? He
cultivated this image of being an unschooled
peasant, a man of the people. Even though he
was clearly very intelligent, very ambitious,
sources mentioned his reputation for unbridled
vanity. It's a fascinating mix. This huge ego
combined with this genuine radical sympathy for
the common person. He explicitly linked his realism
to anarchist politics. There's that quote from
1850 to a friend. Yeah, where he says something
like, in our so very civilized society, it is
necessary for me to live the life of a savage.
I must be free even of governments. I must address
myself to the people directly. He saw himself
as needing to operate completely outside the
system. Which makes perfect sense of his next
big move. arguably one of the most defiant acts
in 19th century art history. The 1855 Exhibition
Rebellion. Exactly. The setting is the huge Exposition
Universelle in Paris, 1855, a massive state -sponsored
World's Fair. Courbet submits his work. 14 paintings.
But despite his gold medal status, the jury rejects
three of his most important pieces, including
Burial at Ornans and his massive new allegorical
painting, The Artist's Studio. So the establishment...
Even with his previous success, still drew a
line. They did. And Corbet's response, basically,
fine, I'll do it myself. He sets up his own show.
Right next door to the official exposition. He
builds his own temporary building, financed partly
by himself, partly by his patron, Alfred Bruyas,
and calls it, bold as brass, the pavilion of
realism. Just thumbing his nose at the whole
system. Completely. Inside, he shows 40 of his
paintings, including the rejected ones, and he
even writes his own manifesto for the catalog.
That act alone is just huge. It's like the birth
certificate of the independent art exhibition.
It really is. It showed other artists, like the
later Impressionists, that you could bypass the
official salon system. You could take control
of how your art was seen. And the centerpiece
was that rejected painting, the artist's studio.
Well, it's a lot to take in. It is. It's enormous,
complex. He subtitled it, A Real Allegory Summing
Up Seven Years of My Artistic and Moral Life.
So it's deeply personal, but also a statement
about his world. It's famously divided into two
sides, right, with Courbet himself painting in
the middle. That's the structure. In the center,
you have Courbet painting a landscape with a
nude model representing truth or nature looking
on and a small boy admiring his work. Okay. And
the two sides. On the right, he places his friends,
his supporters, the people who get his art. Figures
like the critic Chantlery, the poet Baudelaire,
his patron Bruyas. They represent... you know,
the intellectual and artistic allies. And on
the left? That's what he called the other world
of trivial life. It's a real mix. A priest, a
prostitute, a grave digger, hunters, merchants,
figures representing, as he put it, the exploited
and the exploiters, the people who live off death,
poverty and wealth side by side. And this is
where that hidden political jab comes in. The
one they found with x -rays. Ah, yes. That figure
on the far left, the man with the hunting dogs,
he seems to have been added later. And he's identified
that? By the dogs, and especially by that distinctive
twirled mustache. It's widely believed to be
an allegorical representation of Emperor Napoleon
III. Wow. So Courbet paints this grand allegory
of his life, and he sticks the Emperor of France
over on the side with the exploiters and the
morally dubious characters. It's an incredibly
bold, if subtle, critique. Basically suggesting
Napoleon III's rule, his ownership of France,
was illegitimate. It shows just how deeply his
art and his anti -authoritarian politics were
linked. And he doubled down with that manifesto
he published for the pavilion. He did. He laid
out his aim to translate the customs, the ideas,
the appearance of my epoch, according to my own
estimation, to be his own judge. He wanted to
create living art. Yeah. Rejecting art for art's
sake. Exactly. For Courbet, art had to be engaged
with its time, with social... reality, with the
individual's perception. It wasn't just about
making pretty things. The pavilion itself wasn't
a huge commercial success initially, but it absolutely
cemented his status as a hero for the avant -garde.
Manet, Whistler, they were paying attention.
His reputation for scandal didn't exactly fade
after that, did it? Though maybe the focus shifted
a bit in the 1860s. Yeah, it seems like the main
source of shock moved more towards representations
of women and sexuality. He started painting nudes
that really pushed boundaries. Another way to
attack those academic ideals of beauty. Precisely.
Take Young Ladies on the Banks of the Seine from
1857. The scandal wasn't just that they were
lounging by the river, maybe partially undressed.
It was that they were clearly modern women. Possibly
identifiable as prostitutes, right? That was
the interpretation. And they're casually showing
their undergarments. Critics were used to idealize
timeless nymphs and landscapes. Courbet gave
them contemporary women looking, frankly, bored
or drowsy in their underwear. It felt vulgar,
too real. And this leads to commissions for even
more provocative work. Yes, particularly from
Khalil Bey, this Ottoman diplomat who was a well
-known collector of erotic art. Courbet clearly
understood the market for controversy, but it
also aligned with his desire to break taboos.
Which resulted in some extremely famous and for
a long time hidden paintings. Absolutely. Le
Sommet or Sleep from 1866. Two women entwined
intimately in bed. It was so explicit that when
a dealer tried to show it just a few years later,
in 1872, the police actually got involved. And
then there's the most infamous one of all, l
'origine du monde, the origin of the world. Also
1866. Yeah. A close -up, starkly realistic depiction
of female genitalia commissioned by Khalil Bey
kept hidden in private collections and not publicly
exhibited until, believe it or not, 1988. Almost
125 years later. It shows just how shocking its
directness, its sheer materiality was. And even
here you see the realist principle. It's not
a stylized Venus, not an idealized form. It's
painted with that same attention to physical
presence to the body as real matter. No romanticism.
even in the erotic. He just never stopped poking
the bear, did he? Right up to the end of the
Second Empire. Never. The perfect example is
in 1870. Napoleon III's regime is weakening,
trying to win over liberals. So they nominate
Courbet for the Legion of Honor, France's highest
decoration. A huge official honor. And Courbet,
he publicly, loudly refuses it. Of course he
does. writes this open letter saying the state
has no business honoring artists, that honor
lies only in an artist's own work and principles.
It completely enraged the government, but made
him a massive hero to the opposition. Which perfectly
sets the stage for his role in the upcoming political
chaos. Absolutely. That refusal is like the prelude
to his involvement in the Paris Commune. Okay,
so section four, the Commune, Exile, and the
Vendôme Column. This is where it gets really
dramatic and ultimately tragic for Courbet. It
really does. The context is the Franco -Prussian
War in 1870. France suffers a humiliating defeat.
the emperor is captured, and a new provisional
government, the government of national defense,
takes over. And Courbet, now this famous anti
-establishment figure, weighs in. He does. In
September 1870, he writes to the new government
with a pretty radical proposal regarding the
Vendôme column. That huge column in central Paris,
covered in bronze release. celebrating napoleon
the first victories the very one corbeil argued
it was a monument to war and conquest symbols
that a modern republic should reject he said
it perpetuated outdated imperial ideas what if
you want to do with it his initial idea was actually
quite moderate in a way He suggested dismantling
it carefully and moving it somewhere less prominent,
like the Hotel des Invalides, the military museum
and hospital, preserve it as history but remove
its symbolic power. He also had a more utopian
idea, didn't he? Yeah, this grand vision of melting
down the bronze from the column along with captured
German cannons to create a new monument topped
with a Phrygian cap, the symbol of liberty dedicated
to peace and the federation of French and German
peoples. Very odd. Idealistic. But things didn't
stay calm for long. Not at all. The siege of
Paris, hardship, political tension. It all explodes
in March 1871 when the national government tries
to disarm the Paris National Guard. The government
flees and a revolutionary city council, the Paris
Commune, takes control of the city. And Courbet
dives right in. Head first. He becomes a really
active figure in the Commune's administration.
He helps organize something called the Federation
of Artists. Which includes some big names. Yeah,
people like Daumier, Corot were members. Interestingly,
Manet wasn't in Paris at the time, and their
agenda for the arts was incredibly radical. What
were they proposing? Basically dismantling the
entire state -controlled art system he'd been
fighting against his whole career. They wanted
to abolish the École des Beaux -Arts, the French
Academy in Rome, get rid of government interference
in the salon, no more prizes, no more medals,
a complete democratization of art institutions.
Wow, putting his money where his mouth was. Absolutely.
Absolutely. He gets elected as a delegate for
his local district, the 6th arrondissement, and
he's appointed delegate of fine arts for the
commune. And the Vendôme column issue comes back
up. It does. The commune government, much more
radical than the one Courbet initially wrote
to, passes a decree on April 12th ordering the
column's demolition. Courbet, now in an official
position, later follows up, requesting the demolition
be carried out. And on May 16th, 1871... Down
it comes. Pulled down in this huge symbolic public
event, a massive up yours to the legacy of Napoleon
and the empire. But Courbet, even within the
commune, wasn't just a follower, was he? No,
that's important. He remained his own man. The
sources say he actually opposed some of the commune's
more radical or authoritarian measures, like
setting up a powerful committee of public safety,
which echoed the reign of terror from the first
revolution. And he protested an execution. Yes,
the arrest and execution of his friend Gustave
Chaudet, a socialist journalist. Courbet reportedly
resigned his posts in protest. So even in revolution,
he stuck to his principles about individual liberty.
But that didn't matter when the Commune fell,
did it? Not to the victorious French army, no.
The Commune was brutally crushed in late May
1871, bloody week. Thousands were killed or arrested.
Courbet went into hiding. But they found him.
Arrested him on June 7th. At his trial, he tried
to downplay his role, arguing he'd only wanted
the column moved, not destroyed, and that he'd
join the commune to try and moderate it. Did
they buy it? Not really. His signature was on
documents related to the demolition. He was convicted,
sentenced to six months in prison at Saint -Pelagie,
and fined 500 francs. And even in prison, he
painted. He did. They allowed him an easel and
paints, but crucially, no models were allowed.
Which led to? A really poignant series of still
lifes. Flowers, fruit. And most famously, paintings
of trout. Ah, the trout. Yes. These images of
fish hooked, struggling, bleeding from the gills.
They're widely seen as allegorical self -portraits.
The artist trapped, wounded by the state. Powerful
personal works born from confinement. Six months
in prison. Yeah. But the real punishment came
after he got out. Oh, yes. The financial blow
was catastrophic. In 1873, the new conservative
president, McMahon, decided the Von Noem column
would be rebuilt. And Courbet had to pay for
it. The entire cost. All of it. They slapped
him with a bill for 323 ,000 francs, an absolutely
astronomical, impossible sum. Just pure political
revenge. Utterly vindictive. There was no way
he could ever pay it. Facing financial ruin and
likely more prison time if he defaulted, he did
the only thing he could. He fled. Fled into self
-imposed exile in Switzerland in 1873. He settled
near Lake Geneva in La Tour de Pils. Spending
his last years painting landscapes. Painting
the Swiss landscapes, the Jura mountains, sometimes
looking back towards France. But he was a broken
man, hounded by debt collectors, apparently watched
by spies. And then the final, almost unbelievable,
twist. The French state finally worked out a
repayment plan. He had to pay 10 ,000 francs
a year for the next 33 years. And the first payment
was due. January 1st, 1878. But Courbet died
the day before. December 31st, 1877. Wow. From
liver disease, made worse by heavy drinking.
He literally escaped the first payment by hours.
A life lived in defiance of institutions, ending
by cheating the state one last time, albeit tragically.
What an end. Just incredible. But his death certainly
wasn't the end of his story or his influence.
Let's talk about that legacy. Section 5. Absolutely.
His impact was immediate and huge. Painters like
Whistler, Cezanne admired him deeply. The Impressionists,
especially Manet and Monet, owed him a massive
debt. Monet even painted Courbet into his own
version of Le Déjeuner sur l 'herbe. He kind
of opened the door for painting modern life.
He kicked it open. But maybe the most fascinating
and less obvious line of influence jumps forward
a bit. The connection to Cubism. That seems like
a leap. From gritty realism. to fractured perspective.
It does, but it's a really important insight.
Key figures in the Cubist movement actually cited
Courbet as foundational. Guillaume Apollinaire,
the poet who is sort of the Cubist's spokesperson,
flat out called Courbet the father of the new
painters in 1913. And painters like Metzinger
and Glazes saw him that way too, alongside Cezanne.
Yes. So what's the connection? It wasn't about
subject matter or visual style. It was about
something more fundamental. Materialism. Materialism,
how so? Critics argue that Courbet, more than
maybe any painter before him, relentlessly emphasized
the sheer physical presence of the things he
painted. Their density, their weight, their texture.
Ah, back to that thick paint. The palette knife.
Making the paint itself feel like stuff. Like
matter. Exactly. When you look at the stonebreakers,
you feel the weight of those rocks. You feel
the rough texture of the workers' clothes. When
you look at Burial at Ornans, the ground feels
solid, the bodies have mass. He refused to dematerialize
the world through idealization. He made things
feel subject to gravity. Beautifully put. He
endowed ordinary common subjects with this undeniable
physical weight and dignity through his technique.
And how does that connect to the cubists? They
were breaking things apart, weren't they? They
were breaking down traditional perspective, yes,
but they were also deeply concerned with conveying
the solid three -dimensional reality of objects
in space, reacting against the flatness or fleeting
light of impressionism. They wanted to show an
object's volume, its structure, its physical
presence from multiple viewpoints. Cezanne gave
them a visual language for structure. Courbet
gave them the philosophical or aesthetic imperative,
the insistence that the artwork must convey the
fundamental materiality, the weight of reality.
That uncompromising focus on physical presence
was the groundwork. That's a really powerful
connection. Before we wrap up, there's one more
quite somber aspect of his legacy we need to
touch on. Yes, the tragic afterlife of some of
his works during the Nazi era. It's a grim irony,
isn't it? The ultimate anti -authoritarian artist
having his work looted by the Third Reich. It
is. And it happened primarily because many of
his important paintings had ended up in the collections
of prominent Jewish families. Collectors who
were targeted, persecuted, murdered, were forced
to flee by the Nazis. The sources mention specific
examples. La Falaise de Trette. owned by mark
wolfson and his wife who were tragically murdered
at auschwitz the painting eventually surfaced
at the musee d 'orsay in paris but its history
highlights the complex often painful path of
restitution for looted art in the collection
of baron moore lipo herzog in Hungary. A massive,
incredible collection, including several crubets
like Le Chateau de Blonnet. And yes, even Lorzín
Dimón was part of Herzog's looted collection
at one point. The fight to recover the Herzog
collection continues to this day. One of the
biggest Nazi looted art cases still unresolved.
So the political weight, the connection to justice
or injustice, it just continues to cling to his
work. It really does. And restitution efforts
are ongoing. Just last year, March 2023, Cambridge
University returned a Courbet painting, the Ronde
Authentine, to the heirs of a Jewish resistance
member it had belonged to before being stolen
during the Nazi occupation. It shows his art
is still deeply entangled with social reality,
with history, with justice. His legacy isn't
just in a museum. It's still being contested
and reclaimed in the real world. He forced art
to confront reality. And in a way, reality keeps
confronting his art. That really sums it up.
What a life, what an impact. So Corbet, the innovator
who basically invents realism, the political
firebrand who takes on an emperor, the revolutionary
artist who demanded that art look the world straight
in the eye, flaws and all. And his own words
probably say it best. That personal declaration
he wanted remembered. It's just amazing. A man
who truly seemed to risk everything, his reputation,
his money, his freedom, his life, for that idea
of liberty, both artistic and political. Which
brings us to our final thought for you, the listener.
We've talked about how Corbett's great innovation
was giving this incredible sense of weight, of
gravity, to the ordinary world, the stones, the
bodies, the landscapes, making them physically
present, undeniably real. So here's the question.
What fundamental physical or social force today,
something perhaps ignored, glossed over or deliberately
avoided by mainstream culture, is waiting for
a contemporary artist to give it that same kind
of revolutionary weight and unavoidable presence?
What needs to be made inescapably real for us
now, the way Corbet made poverty or provincial
funeral real for his time? Something to think
about. Definitely something to think about. Thank
you for joining us for this deep dive. Thank
you. We'll see you next time.