Gustave Courbet and artworks

Patrick Bade

• Publisher: Parkstone International
• Year: 2022
• eBook ISBN: 9781781608470
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: Artist Monographs

Ornans, Courbet's birthplace, is near the beautiful valley of the Doubs River, and it was here as a boy, and later as a man, that he absorbed the love of landscape. He was by nature a revolutionary, a man born to oppose existing order and to assert his independence; he had that quality of bluster and brutality which makes the revolutionary count in art as well as in politics. In both directions his spirit of revolt manifested itself. He went to Paris to study art, yet he did not attach himself to the studio of any of the prominent masters. Already in his country home he had had a little instruction in painting, and preferred to study the masterpieces of the Louvre. At first his pictures were not sufficiently distinctive to arouse any opposition, and were admitted to the Salon. Then followed the Funeral at Ornans, which the critics violently assailed: "A masquerade funeral, six metres long, in which there is more to laugh at than to weep over." Indeed, the real offence of Courbet's pictures was that they represented live flesh and blood. They depicted men and women as they really are and realistically doing the business in which they are engaged. His figures were not men and women deprived of personality and idealised into a type, posed in positions that will decorate the canvas. He advocated painting things as they are, and proclaimed that la vérité vraie must be the aim of the artist. So at the Universal Exposition of 1855 he withdrew his pictures from the exhibition grounds and set them in a wooden booth, just outside the entrance. Over the booth he posted a sign with large lettering. It read, simply: "Courbet – Realist." Like every revolutionary, he was an extremist. He ignored the fact that to every artist the truth of nature appears under a different guise according to his way of seeing and experiencing. Instead, he adhered to the notion that art is only a copying of nature and not a matter also of selection and arrangement. In his contempt for prettiness Courbet often chose subjects which may fairly be called ugly. But that he also had a sense of beauty may be seen in his landscapes. That sense, mingled with his capacity for deep emotion, appears in his marines – these last being his most impressive work. Moreover, in all his works, whether attractive or not to the observer, he proved himself a powerful painter, painting in a broad, free manner, with a fine feeling for colour, and with a firmness of pigment that made all his representations very real and stirring.

Table of contents

• Biography
• Portrait of a Young Woman
• White Bull and Blond Heifer
• Study for The Young Ladies of the Village
• The Young Ladies of the Village
• The Wrestlers
• The Bathers
• The Sleeping Spinner
• Portrait of Alfred Bruyas
• The Homecoming
• The Encounter or Bonjour Monsieur Courbet
• The Spanish Lady
• The Grain Sifters
• The Painter's Studio: A Real Allegory Summing up Seven Years of my Artistic and Moral Life
• Le Château d’Ornans
• Mother Grégoire
• The Quarry
• Study for one of the Young Ladies on the Banks of the Seine
• Young Ladies on the Banks of the Seine
• Portrait of Mathilde Cuoq
• The Bridge at Ambressum
• The Hunting Lunch
• The Lady of Frankfurt
• Portrait of Madame Brayer
• The German Hunter
• The Diligence in the Snow
• Flowers
• Portrait of a Lady with a Parrot
• The Springtime Rut or Battle of the Stags
• Large Oak Trees by the waterside, Port-Berteau
• The Woods of Rochemont. The Round Dance of the Children
• The Trellis
• Study for the Return of the Conference
• Portrait of Gabrielle Borreau
• The Charente at Port-Berteau
• Still-life - Flowers
• Portrait of Laure Borreau
• View of Saintes
• The Source of the Loue
• Reflexion or Meditation
• The Bridge
• The Source of the Loue
• The Cave de la Loue
• The Oak Tree of Flagey, also called Oak Tree of Vercingetorix
• The Gour de Conche
• Crumbling Rocks
• The Sarrazine Cave
• The Lock of the Loue
• Three English Girls at the Window
• The Somnambulist
• The Girl with the Seagulls, Trouville
• The Beach at Trouville at Low Tide
• The Covered Stream or The Stream of the Black Well
• Portrait of the Countess Palma Karoly
• Fantastic View of Amorphous Rocks
• Portrait of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and his Children
• Fishing Boat
• Woman with a Parrot
• Marine
• Deer Reserve at Plaisir-Fontaine
• The Poor Village Lady, Ornans
• The Ruse
• Origin of the World
• Jo, the Beautiful Irish Girl
• The Awakening
• Sleep
• Hunters in the Snow
• Killing the Deer or Scene of a Hunt in the Snow
• Hunter on horseback
• Almsgiving from a Beggar in Ornans
• The Three Bathers
• Landscape with Snow
• The Woman in the Waves
• The Source
• Portrait of Pierre Dupont
• Beach in Normandy
• The Rock of Hautepierre
• The Black Well
• The Cliff of Étretat after the Storm
• The Wave
• The Wave
• The Stormy Sea
• Still Life with Apples and Pomegranate
• Still-life - Fruits
• Still Life - Apples
• Three Trouts from the Loue
• The Sea
• The Blue Source
• Self-Portrait at Sainte-Pélagie
• The Bridge of Fleurier
• Portrait of Régis Courbet
• The Vintager of Montreux
• Chillon Castle
• Sunset on Lake Leman
• View of Lake Léman with a Cloudy Sky
• The Old Mill
• Panorama of the Alps, La Dent du Midi