Realism in Art: Courtbet, Miller and Daumier

Romanticism to Fin-de-Siècle, Week 3

Realism rebelled against the Romanticist style, as Romanticism had become conservative. Therefore a new generation of artists created something new.

Historical element: The 1848 revolution started in Paris and spread all over Europe triggering a conservative reaction. The working class rebelled against political establishment of Louis Phillippe. Europe was at war for 2 years in many places. This coincided with realism movement.


Jules-Antoine Castagnary: 1857 Salon review: "There is no need to return to history, to take refuge in legends, to summon powers of imagination. Beauty is before the eyes, not in the brain; in the present, not in the past; in truth, not in dreams."

Castagnary, calls for art to be in the present; if an artist wants to be impactful, he mustn't depict classical or religious paintings, he needs to depict what's happening now, especially in the political upheaval.

Gustave Courbet (1819-1877)
This was the most important of the period Courbet. He had a personality larger than life, and promoted himself as 'The Great Realist Painter'. He was the first great avant-garde painter. He went against the establishment and the taste of the common people, and proposed something very different, new and scandalous.

Courbet's Self-Portrait of 1884, is an expression of feeling and desperation. He soon moved on to something completely different.

Gustave Courbet, Self-Portrait (The Desperate Man), 1844-5, Private Collection 

Courbet begins to depict reality as it is, not as it should be. This was the opposite to the credo of the Academy. Courbet is a Realist in its narrowest sense. Especially in his the depiction of the working class. Photography was popular at this time, photographs showed the world as it is, not in an idealised way. For the first time in history, there was something to compete with the fine arts.

Courbet's A Burial at Ornan, was displayed at the Salon in Paris and generated a huge scandal. Courbet came from provincial middle class background. He was fortunate enough to go to Paris, he went back to Ornan for a summer and painted this huge painting. It was shocking because it was the burial of an ordinary man in a provincial setting but also because a crucifixion can be seen in the background. This painting is not an example of virtue, it is simply a burial. The public were used to paintings having a meaning and a clear message. A Burial at Ornan is roughly executed. By presenting a painting on the same scale as history painting but with no meaning or nobility attached to it. Courbet was intending to shock the middle class bourgeois on any level. He used family members and locals as models. Real, truth, faithful to actual reality, no drama, no great expressions, and all the figures in the foreground. All of these things would have been shocking. Titian, Rembrandt, Velasquez and Rubens are all influences, in that they all used loose brush strokes.

Gustave Courbet, A Burial at Ornan, 1849-50, Musée d'Orsay, Paris

Painting at the same time was William-Adolphe Bouguereau. He painted popular paintings and sold them to the bourgeoisie. Battle of the Lapiths and Centaurs is a mythological subject, that was first depicted on the Parthenon metope. This subject matter is a typical metaphorical representation of behaviour. The rational vs. the irrational human mind. This piece is incredibly melodramatic, sculptural, filled with movement and is has different plains. Bouguereau's painting looks artificial compared to the realistic paintings by Courbet.

Bouguereau, Battle of the Lapiths and Centaurs, 1852, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts


Courbet's carefully constructed image tries to de-structure the classical taste. He does not incorporate nudes. Unlike the heroic nudes in Bouguereau's Battle of the Lapiths and Centaurs. Bouguereau's painting is also a reference to Raphael. Nor does he incorporate the drama of the Baroque, there is no dramatisation of expression, like in Guido Reni's paintings.


Courbet knew how to market himself and knew how to make a scandal. He breaks all the traditions and creates a shock.
Courbet was a big fan of pop art, rough wood cuts that appeared in magazines. For example, the funeral of Napoleon, this work has almost no perspective, it is very rough but impactful. Courbet was much more in tune with the taste of the small middle class and working class than other artists.

Convoi Funebre de Napoleon [Napoleon's Funeral], Epinal, Pellerin, c. 1821

The Stone Breakers is more confrontation than the burial. It is was a gigantic painting of working class people breaking stones. Their faces not seen, making them seem more like machines than men. Their clothes are ripped, and they are dirty. The painting illustrates the conditions of the working class. It is a statement and was considered to be even more revolutionary than the previous work.

Gustave Courbet, The Stone Breakers, 1849, destroyed in 1945

He later moved on to depict images such as Girls on the Banks of the Seine. The Great Paris exhibition was in 1855, however the Salon was forced to reject his paintings due to their scandalous nature. Courbet was a great promoter of himself - he built a pavilion outside the Salon and called it The Pavilion of Realism. That year, more people visited Courbet’s work than the official Salon. The whole point of his work was to shock. The popular quote: "I don't care what the newspapers say about me, as long as they spell my name right" seems to be very fitting for Courbet.
The Girls on the Banks of the Seine are most likely prostitutes. They lie on the lush ground, looking out realistically at the viewer. Compared to something that the public were used to seeing, such as Franz Xaver Winterhalter's Eugénie, Empress of the French and her Ladies, Courbet's sensual girls not what the public are familiar with in painting, but perhaps are relatable in terms of real life, which may be a little uncomfortable for the men to see this sort of image in a gallery, while in the company of his wife...

Gustave Courbet, Les Demoiselles des bords de la Seine [Girls of the banks of the Seine], 1857, Musée du Petit Palais, Paris

Franz Xaver Winterhalter, Eugénie, Empress of the French and her Ladies, 1855, Museée National de Palais de Compiègne, France

Courbet starts the art of scandal.

Jean-François Millet (1814-1875), was a very Catholic artist with academic training. But he decided to go in opposite direction to the academy. He hated academic environment, and went back to his home province and painted the farmers.

Jean-François Millet, The Gleaners, 1857m Musée d'Orsay, Paris

Angelus, shows the farmer's last prayer of the day. Spirituality was very important in his paintings.

Jean-François Millet, Angelus, 1857-9, Musée d'Orsay, Paris

Honoré Daumier (1808-1879) was a great illustrator of the 19th century. He often published lithographic prints in newspapers, always depicting the conditions of the working class. His intention was to bring social injustice to the attention of the masses. Crude, black and white, and very impactful. He was the champion of realism in illustration.

Honoré Daumier, Rye Transnonain, 15/04/1834, Lithography, 1834

He also tried his hand at painting, but was pretty much ignored by public so continued to produce his powerful illustrations. His painting The Third-Class Carriage again depicts the lives of a working class family. 

Honoré Daumier, The Third-Class Carriage, 1964, Met Museum, New York


Academies and Academic Art in the 19th century. 
- 90% of paintings in 19th century were classical paintings. Typical and traditional. Thomas Couture is an artist who fits this criteria. (Eisenmann interpretation is completely wrong - to be discussed next week). His Romans during the Decadence, is a gigantic painting with a political comment.

Thomas Couture, Romans during the Decadence, 1847, Musée d'Orsay, Paris

The avant-garde painters had to organise their own exhibitions. Academic art was very much accepted in Salon. Images of the naked Venus were not considered to be scandalous, as they were a representation of a Goddess, and it was acceptable to see Gods and Goddesses in the nude. Therefore depictions such as Alexandre Cabanel's La Naissance de Vénus [The Birth of Venus], Titian's The Bacchanal of the Andriana, Giorgione's Sleeping Venus, Ingres' Odalisque with Slave, and Bouguereau's Birth of Venus, were all accepted as these artists capitalised off of other depictions of classical imagery, they were depictions of Venus, not ordinary naked women. Many famous French academic painters' portrayal of Venus look like parodies of the classical works.


Daumier commenting on Venus’ portrayed in exhibitions:
Honoré Daumier, Caricature (French Bourgeoisie): This Year Venuses Again... Always Venuses! in Le Charivari, 1864

Édouard Manet (1832-1883) painted Olympia in 1863, this was a huge shock to the public, as it depicted a real woman, not a Venus, but a real courtesan. Looking at you, the viewer.
Édouard Manet, Olympia, 1863, Musée d'Orsay, Paris

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