Lecture 41: Realism—From Daumier to Courbet
pretti¿ ed his subjects and was never sentimental. We see ¿ rst The Sower
(c. 1850). The painting shows a powerful ¿ gure precisely situated against
the sloping horizon. He strides forward, ¿ lling the picture. The ¿ gure’s
casting of the grain probably refers to a biblical proverb. Another famous
Millet is The Gleaners (c. 1857). We see, obviously, that the three women
are performing back-breaking labor, but part of the story is also taking
place in the far background. There we see hay wagons, people loading hay,
and an overseer on horseback. This is the main harvest; this is what the
landlord reaps.Gustave Courbet (18191877) was born at Ornans, in southeastern France,
near the Swiss border. At 21, he traveled to Paris, copied in the Louvre, and
studied at the Atelier Suisse. Soon he developed a powerful Naturalism.
Our ¿ rst works shows The Stone Breakers (1849, destroyed at Dresden),
a compelling painting depicting two anonymous peasants, again, at
hard labor.Our next example is A Burial at Ornans (1849). The work feels unedited, a
transcript of the experience of the rural people of a corner of France distant
from Paris, but the painting was made to be exhibited in Paris. The deep
attachment of the French people to their individual regions is well attested
and seems almost a mythical part of being French. In this painting, nothing
is more or less important than any other thing. A kind of equality marches
across the canvas. We sense the range of human experience, with the clergy
on the left and the townspeople on the right. The isolation of the cross
against the sky on the left seems intentionally ironic. This was painted in
post-revolutionary, anticlerical France, and Courbet also seems critical of
the clergy in this painting. In the center of this huge picture is a hole in the
ground—the grave. The painting is antiheroic, as well as anticlerical.Next, we see The Artist’s Studio (1854–1855). A fuller title of this painting,
though still an adaptation of the French, is Interior of My Studio: A Real
Allegory of Seven Years of My Life as a Painter. This title is almost as long
as the painting. When Courbet began the painting, he wrote to a friend that it
would prove that “I am not yet dead, or realism either, for this is realism...