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Is Gustave Courbet a Political Painter?
Are A Burial at Ornans and The Painter's Studio
Secretly Political Paintings?
Gustave Courbet died in exile as a result of his political choices. However, his involvement in the Paris Commune does not justify his reputation as a politically engaged painter. If his paintings were political, they were only understood by those in the know.
Chapter 1 - From Painter to Communard
Gustave Courbet held elected office, participated in the establishment of the Third Republic and served as a member of the Paris Commune. Held responsible for the destruction of the Vendôme Column, he was ordered to pay a substantial fine and eventually fled France.
Chapter 2 - Courbet's Trilogy: Subject and Form
His famous trilogy of realist paintings, A Burial at Ornans, The Peasants of Flagey and The Stone Breakers, deserves formal analysis. His work on composition and lighting did not respect the pictorial conventions of history painting, causing great scandal and caricature.
A thorough analysis of the critical response to A Burial at Ornans suggests that the painting went against the established sociopolitical order. Some interpretations, such as those by T.J. Clark and Jean-Luc Mayaud, even suggest that the painting was an insult to Parisians or an encoded political revolt.
Chapter 3 - Political Analysis of A Burial at Ornans
Chapter 4 - The Proudhon of Painting, The Artist's Studio
Gustave Courbet's The Painter's Studio can be interpreted as a painting with a hidden message. It could be a tribute to the ideas of Proudhon, a theorist of anarchism and socialism, or it could be Courbet's version of the Last Judgement. Hélène Toussaint's interpretations make the latter theory seem very credible.
Bibliography
Jean-Luc MAYAUD, Courbet, l'Enterrement à Ornans : un tombeau pour la République, La Boutique de l'histoire éditions, 1999
T.J. Clark, Image of the People – Gustave Courbet and the 1848 Revolution, Thames and Hudson, 1973
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Du Principe de l'art et de sa destination sociale, Garnier frères,1865
James Henry Rubin, Realism and Social Vision in Courbet and Proudhon, Princetone University Press, 1980
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