cluster around the excavated grave site, their faces registering all de-
grees of response to the situation. Although the painting has the
monumental scale of a traditional history painting, the subject’s or-
dinariness and the starkly antiheroic composition horrified contem-
poraneous critics. Arranged in a wavering line extending across the
broad horizontal width of the canvas are three groups—the somberly
clad women at the back right, a semicircle of similarly clad men
by the open grave, and assorted churchmen at the left. This wall ofT
he Parisian academic jury selecting work for the 1855 Salon (part
of the Exposition Universelle in that year) rejected two paintings
by Gustave Courbet on the grounds that his subjects and figures were
too coarse (so much so as to be plainly “socialistic”) and too large (Bur-
ial at Ornans,FIG. 30-28,is almost 22 feet long). In response, Courbet
withdrew all of his works and set up his own exhibition outside the
grounds, calling it the Pavilion of Realism. Courbet was the first artist
ever to stage a private exhibition of his own work. His pavilion and the
statement he issued to explain the paintings shown there amounted to
the new movement’s manifestos. Although Courbet maintained that he
founded no school and was of no school, he did, as the name of his
pavilion suggests, accept the term Realism as descriptive of his art. The
statement Courbet distributed at his pavilion reads in part:
The title of “realist” has been imposed upon me ....Titles have
never given a just idea of things; were it otherwise, the work would
be superfluous....I have studied the art of the moderns, avoiding
any preconceived system and without prejudice. I have no more
wanted to imitate the former than to copy the latter; nor have I
thought of achieving the idle aim of “art for art’s sake.” No! I have
simply wanted to draw from a thorough knowledge of tradition
the reasoned and free sense of my own individuality....To be able
to translate the customs, ideas, and appearances of my time as I see
them—in a word, to create a living art—this has been my aim.*Six years later, on Christmas Day, 1861, Courbet wrote an open
letter, published a few days later in the Courier du dimanche,ad-
dressed to prospective students. In the letter, the painter reflected on
the nature of his art.
[An artist must apply] his personal faculties to the ideas and the events
of the times in which he lives....[A]rt in painting should consist only
of the representation of things that are visible and tangible to the
artist. Every age should be represented only by its own artists, that is
to say, by the artists who have lived in it. I also maintain that paint-
ing is an essentially concrete art form and can consist only of the
representation of both real and existing things....An abstract ob-
ject, not visible, nonexistent, is not within the domain of painting.†
Courbet’s most famous statement, however, is his blunt dismissal
of academic painting, in which he concisely summed up the core prin-
ciple of Realist painting:
I have never seen an angel. Show me an angel, and I’ll paint one.‡* Translated by Robert Goldwater and Marco Treves, eds.,Artists on Art from the
XIV to the XX Century,3d ed. (New York: Pantheon, 1958), 295.
†Translated by Petra ten-Doesschate Chu,Letters of Gustave Courbet(Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1992), 203–204.
‡Quoted by Vincent van Gogh in a July 1885 letter to his brother Theo. Ronald de
Leeuw,The Letters of Vincent van Gogh(New York: Penguin, 1996), 302.❚ARTISTS ON ART:Courbet on Realism
ARTISTS ON ART30-28Gustave Courbet,Burial at Ornans,1849. Oil on canvas, 10 31 – 2 21 91 – 2 . Musée d’Orsay, Paris.
Although as monumental in scale as a traditional history painting, Burial at Ornanshorrified critics because of the ordinary nature of the subject
and Courbet’s starkly antiheroic composition.
Realism 7991 ft.