Petit Palais – Musée des beaux-arts de la ville de Paris, Paris.
10. The Sculptor, 1845.
Oil on canvas, 55 × 41 cm.
Private collection.
Courbet, who had extended his summer holiday in Ornans, did not return to Paris until December. He worked on a portrait of his friend Urbain Cuenot, which his friends, and Monsieur Hesse in particular, declared marvellous. However, he doubted that this work would be accepted for the Salon, because “it is entirely over the examiners’ heads.” He consoled himself with the thought that there was beginning to be talk of a coalition of painters who were rejected every year at the Louvre, and who would exhibit somewhere else in protest.
His predictions weren’t wrong. The three paintings that he submitted were refused. It was prejudice; the jurors rejected all those who weren’t of their school except a few “against whom they were powerless, such as Delacroix, Decamps, and Diaz.” Although their opinion mattered little to him as far as his reputation was concerned one had to exhibit, and, unfortunately, there was only that exhibition. “In previous years, when I had less of my own manner and so was still doing a bit like them, they accepted me; but now that I am myself, I mustn’t hope for it.” The frustrated artists reacted; there was talk of a petition to the king, or the Chamber of Deputies, and of a counter-exhibition in private rooms. Courbet was of the latter opinion, and he went on to set out his ideas in several articles for the Corsaire. It is known that this plan took shape and that a number of artists, including some very important ones such as Scheffer, Decamps, Dupré, Delacroix, Rousseau, Barye, Charles Jacque and Daumier amongst others, gathered at Barye’s place on the 15th of April 1847 and drafted a document, later registered with a notary in Paris named Monsieur Faisceau-Lavanne, in which they decided to establish an exhibition independent from the official Salon. The Revolution of 1848 kept them from going ahead with their plan.
Somewhat discouraged and beginning to doubt seriously of ever succeeding in his own country, Courbet thought of seeking a following abroad, particularly in Holland, where he had received his earliest and most faithful support. He announced in August 1847 that he was leaving for that country, the only one where he had any hope of earning any money quickly. He already knew a dealer and besides, he had been recommended “to a certain Van den Bogaert, the ‘high cupbearer’ to the king of Holland, a very influential man and one of the leading citizens of Amsterdam.” He would spend his time looking at what art lovers liked, studying the old masters and getting acquainted with art dealers, so he would be unable to arrive in Ornans until the first of September. During this trip, Courbet became familiar with the work of the old Dutch masters, particularly Rembrandt’s, for which he always had the greatest admiration, and to which his own portraits were related in an irrefutable way. He studied them in The Hague and Amsterdam, and described what a revelation they were for him, saying that this trip, “truly indispensable for an artist,” had taught him more than three years of work. Unfortunately, the living there was very expensive, and he announced his departure for the following week.
A letter of the 21st of December 1847 shows that he is very busy with a painting that he intended for the Salon. It was a painting that would cost him dear.
The Revolution of 1848 doesn’t seem to have taken him by surprise, nor diverted him from his work. He paid very little attention to politics, “as usual,” as he found “nothing more hollow than that.” He helped out a bit in “destroying former errors” and he was still ready to do so if there were new ones; but he was a painter above all, and the proof of that was that he had been painting again for a fortnight, “in spite of the Republic, which is not the kind of government most favourable for artists, historically, at least.”
The six paintings (Young Girl Sleeping, Evening, Midday, Morning, The Cellist, and Portrait of Urbain Cuenot) and three drawings (Classical Walpurgis Night) that he submitted to the Salon were accepted, but since there were 5,500 works accepted that year, and that moreover they were poorly placed, he had little hope of being noticed. However, Courbet’s apprehensions were unfounded; critical opinion began to support him. Champfleury exclaimed, “people have not sufficiently noted, this year, at the Salon, a large and striking work, Classical Walpurgis Night, a painting inspired by the theme of Faust. I say it here, and let it be remembered! He, the unknown artist who painted this Classical Walpurgis Night, will be a great painter…” We must conclude, however, that the artist himself did not place too great an importance on this work, since he painted The Wrestlers over it. Prosper Haussard wrote:
“At the last three Salons, Monsieur Courbet has gone unnoticed. Is it our fault or his? Certainly in 1848 he qualifies as an artist, he makes his début as a painter. His Cellist in particular has the makings of style and manner, a handling of brushwork and chiaroscuro which stand out with brilliance; it’s like a reappearance of Caravaggio and Rembrandt.”
Briefly, Courbet thought of entering the contest for the picture of the Republic, which was to replace the portrait of the king, Louis-Philippe. He decided against it, however. In the meantime, his poverty was increasing; he had no money at all. His clothes were in tatters and to save the expense of a tailor, he had himself dressed in the uniform of the National Guard; “I will be splendid in that, and people will take me for a rabid Republican.”
A letter of the 26th of June was written during the influence of the revolutionary fervour which followed the closing of the ateliers nationaux (state-sponsored work program under the Second Republic). It was just after the bloody days in June, with the deaths of Generals Négrier and Regnault and of the Archbishop of Paris and the terrible repression by General Cavaignac. “It is the most distressing spectacle that you could possibly imagine,” he exclaimed, “I think that nothing like it has ever happened in France, not even the Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre.” To his parents, who begged him to stay out of it, he answered; “There are two reasons I am not fighting; first, because I don’t believe in war with guns and canons, and it’s not part of my creed. For ten years I’ve been fighting a war of wits. I would not be true to myself if I acted otherwise. The second reason is that I don’t have any weapons and cannot be tempted. So you have nothing to fear where I am concerned.”
The Courbet of the years to come, even the Courbet of the Commune, was already entirely present in this very interesting letter; Republican in his soul, utopian, humanitarian, and rejecting violence. The painter barely appears in it, but we mustn’t let this silence deceive us. There was a third cause for the artist’s abstention. The fact was that in spite of civil war, barricades, the revolution which rumbled in the streets, the roar of the crowd, the fervour and the carnage, Courbet was obsessed with his dream of fame and went on working with all of his might. And in the end, fame would begin to reward his labours.
11. The Game of Draughts, 1844.
Oil on canvas, 25 × 34 cm.
Private collection.
12. The Wounded Man, 1844.
Oil on canvas, 81.5 × 97.5 cm.
Musée d’Orsay, Paris.
13. Lovers in the Country, 1844.
Oil on canvas, 78 × 60 cm.
Petit Palais – Musée des beaux-arts de la ville de Paris, Paris.
The Beginnings of Realism
One of Murger’s characters in Scènes de la vie de Bohème (Scenes of Bohemian Life) was Schaunard, whose real name was Alexandre Schanne. He was a painter at odds with the authorities, ended up selling toys in the Marais district of Paris and sketched an entertaining description in his Souvenirs of life in the realist crowd, around 1849. Every evening Schanne went to an open studio where one could paint and sculpt from live models for six francs a month. Years later, Schanne could still remember how astonished he and his colleagues, among them Bonvin, were