The Rhetoric of RealismCourbet and the Origins of the

Avant-Garde

“When I am dead let this be said of me: 'He belonged to no school, to no church, to no institution, to no academy, least of all to any régime except the régime of liberty.”

Gustave Courbet, 1869

Honoré Daumier (French, 1808–1879), Gargantua, 1831, lithograph, Bibliotheque Nationale de France, Paris. Caricature of King Louis Phillip as Gargantua (satire by François Rabelais, 1494 - 1553) led to Daumier's imprisonment for six months at St. Pelagic in 1832.

(left) Honoré Daumier, Pygmalion, from the "Ancient History" Series, 1842, lithograph, Bibliotheque Nationale de France, Paris, France(right) Anne-Louis Girodet, Pygmalion and Galatea, 1813-19, oil on canvas 99 x 115 in.

Honoré Daumier (French, 1808-1879), The Uprising, 1848 or later, oil on canvas, 34 x 44 in. The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.

Honoré Daumier, Ratapoil, 1851, bronze, 17 in., Musée d'Orsay, Paris, France. “Ratapoil” means “skinned rat ”: a government agent

Jean-Hippolyte Flandrin (French, 1809-1864), Napoleon III, 1860-61, oil on canvas, 83 x 58in. Ruler of the Second French Empire (1852-1870) and the last monarch of France.

Honoré Daumier, The Third-Class Carriage, ca. 1862–64, oil on canvas, 25 ¾ x 35 ½ in., Metropolitan MA, NYC

Jean-François Millet (1814 - 1875) The Gleaners, 1857, Musée d'Orsay, Paris. Barbison school and Realism influenced by Daumier’s paintings.

Jean-François Millet (French Realist, 1814-1875), The Sower, oil on canvas, 40 x 33 in. 1850. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Gustave Courbet (French, 1819-1877) Self-Portrait, c. 1845Théodore Gèricault, Portrait of an Insane Woman (envy), 1822, Musée des Beaux-arts de Lyon, France

Gustave Courbet, The Man With the Leather Belt, 1845-46oil on canvas, 39 x 32in. Paris, Musée d'Orsay

Gustave Courbet, Portrait of the Artist (Wounded Man) 1844-54 Oil on canvas , 32 x 38in, Musee d'Orsay, Paris

Gustave Courbet, The Stone Breakers, 1849 (destroyed during World War II), oil on canvas, 63 in x 8ft 6in.

Gustave Courbet, A Burial at Ornans 1849-1850, oil on canvas, 10ft 3in x 21ft 9 in., Musee d'Orsay, Paris

Gustave Courbet, Burial at Ornans, 1849 compare with (below) Thomas Couture, Romans of the Decadence, 1847

William Bouguereau, (left) Mother and Children, The Rest, 1879 (right) Home From the Harvest, 1878, Cummer Museum of Art, Jacksonville,

Florida

William Bouguereau, The Broken Pitcher, 1891the De Young MA, San Francisco

Early 19th century French Épinal print

Gustave Courbet (French, 1819–1877), The Peasants of Flagey Returning from the Fair, 1850–55, oil on canvas, 83 x 109 in. Musée des Beaux-Arts et d'Archéologie, Besançon, France

Rosa Bonheur (French, 1822-1899), Plowing in Nivernais (Labourages Nivernais), 1850, oil on canvas, 52 1/2 x 102 in. Ringling Museum, Sarasota, Florida

Gustave Courbet, The Painter's Studio: A Real Allegory Summing up Seven Years of My Artistic Life, 1855, oil on canvas, 12ft x 19ft 8in 1/2in, Musée d'Orsay, Paris

“I have studied, outside of any system and without prejudice, the art of the ancients and of the Moderns. I no more wanted to imitate the one than to copy the other; nor, furthermore, was it my intuition to attain the trivial goal of art for art's sake. No! I simply wanted to draw forth from a complete acquaintance with tradition the reasoned and independent consciousness of my own individuality"

"To know in order to be able to create, that was my idea. To be in a position to translate the customs, the ideas, the appearance of my epoch, according to my own estimation: to be not only a painter, but a man as well: in short, to create living art - this is my goal.“

Gustave Courbet, statement for the Pavilion of Realism, built next to the Paris International Exhibition of 1855

The French government signed an armistice with the Prussians on 28 February 1871. On 18 March 1871, the Commune of Paris was declared. Until 28 May 1871, the Commune reigned in Paris - a worker's insurrection whose red banners hinted at worker's revolutions to come in the early 20th century some 46 years later.

(left) Destruction of Paris following the Franco-Prussian war, siege of Paris, and (right) after the Commune 1871, Communards shot by firing squad of French soldiers (in the streets of Paris).

Courbet as Communard, and the destruction of the Vendome column, symbol of Napoleonic imperialism and the power of Napoleon III

"Inasmuch as the Vendôme column is a monument devoid of all artistic value, tending to perpetuate by its expression the ideas of war and conquest of the past imperial dynasty, which are reproved by a republican nation's sentiment, citizen Courbet expresses the wish that the National Defense government will authorise him to disassemble this column.“ – Courbet

Gustave Courbet, Self-Portrait at Sainte-Pelagie, 1872 Imprisoned for Communard activities, this is Courbet’s last self-portrait

Gustave Courbet, Panoramic View of the Alps, Les Dents du Midi [The Teeth of the South], 1877, Cleveland Museum of Art. Painted in exile in Switzerland, lower right unfinished at artist’s death in 1877.

Pre-Raphaelites

John Everett Millais (British, 1829-1896), Christ in the House of His Parents (`The Carpenter's Shop'), 1850, oil on canvas, 33 x 54 in. Tate, London.

William Holman Hunt, The Awakening Conscience, 1853, oil on canvas, 29 x 22 in. Tate, London

Ford Madox Brown, Work, 1852-65, oil on canvas, arched top, 54 x 78 in. Manchester City Art Galleries, Manchester, England. “Mental laborers” on the right: socialist philosophers Frederick Denison Maurice (right) and Thomas Carlyle (left)

The contrast of labor and idleness in Brown’s Work continues on the gold frame, which contains Biblical quotations about the virtue and

importance of hard work.