In the year of 1849, Courbet went several times to Louveciennes, near the former residence of Madame Du Barry. This was a charming village on the edge of the forest of Marly, not far from Vaucresson, Garches, la Celle-Saint-Cloud, and l’Etang-la-Ville, which had exquisite paths shaded by centuries-old oaks and beech trees to tempt the rambler. There he would call upon another of his compatriots in his quiet abode, Francis Wey, who had been born in Besançon in 1812.
They had met in the winter of 1848, as Wey himself tells it in his Mémoires inédits; “One afternoon, near the foot of the rue de Seine, I met Monsieur Champfleury, and, as we were gabbing on the pavement, he mentioned a young, enormously talented painter, as yet entirely unknown, and who, being a native of my Franche-Comté, would be worthy of a visit.” They decided to do so at once and went to the rue Mazarine, crossed the Place de l’École de Médecine, and went up to the studio. There they saw coming towards them, “a tall young man with beautiful eyes, but very thin, pale, sallow, bony, lanky […]. He nodded at me, without saying a word,” wrote Francis Wey, “then went back to his stool in front of a canvas which I saw as I came up behind him. I don’t remember ever having been so dazzled. The painting before me, treated with a rustic nonchalance, like the subject, showed a masterful insouciance, a controlled fire; the dark tones of the painting, the poetry of the execution were like no known style.” Full of enthusiasm, Wey exclaimed, “With such a rare and marvellous gift, how is it that you are not already famous? No one has ever painted like that!”
“Pardié,” replied the artist with a very countrified Franche-Comté accent, “I paint like God!”
19. Man with a Leather Belt, Portrait of the Artist, 1845–1846.
Oil on canvas, 100 × 82 cm.
Musée d’Orsay, Paris.
20. Portrait of Alfred Bruyas, known as Painting Solution, 1853.
Oil on canvas, 92 × 74 cm.
Musée Fabre, Montpellier.
Francis Wey couldn’t help being taken aback by this placid statement, and the rest of the conversation simply increased his astonishment. Courbet struck him as, “quite odd, as if rebelling… against most every theory, and steeped in a wilful ignorance, calculated to create an effect.” He railed against the masters, against pupils who subjected themselves before them like slaves, and declared that it was high time to change all that. But the writer did not criticise him for these opinions so unlike his own, because of the “evidence of his extraordinary worth” spread before him, among which were Man with a Pipe and the future success at the Salon of 1849, as well as After Dinner at Ornans, which had caught his eye as soon as he entered.
That Salon of 1849 was highly important in the history of art since the exhibiting artists were allowed to elect the jury themselves. The experiment was enormously successful, if one judges by the results; Courbet was awarded the second-place medal. He had submitted seven works, including landscapes, portraits, and a genre scene, all of which were accepted.
The great success went to the After Dinner at Ornans. The scene takes place in the Courbet kitchen, near the immense fireplace, on a dark afternoon, when all the objects are bathed in chiaroscuro. The meal has just finished and the table is still covered with the remains. The musician Promayet is standing, playing the violin; Courbet is listening absently; his father, with a glass in his hand, is asleep, and Adolphe Marlet carefully takes an ember from the fireplace to light his pipe. The overall impression is rustic, calm, serene, restful; the heads are all excellent portraits and everything, even down to the big bulldog asleep under a chair, shows how Courbet was able to render his observations with fluidity and truth. The After Dinner at Ornans is one of the great masterpieces of the nineteenth century.
Courbet was much talked about in the newspapers and magazines. In the Revue des Deux Mondes, F. de Lagenevais criticised him for having painted a genre scene on a five-foot canvas. In his view, using life-size proportions was wrong; one should look at life through the small end of the glass, and furthermore, make it poetic. As for Champfleury, he sounded an epic note; “Courbet has taken the Salon by storm with nine paintings. Yesterday, no one knew his name; today it on everyone’s lips. Such a sudden success has not been seen in ages.” Concerning the After Dinner at Ornans, “this painting could be boldly hung in the Flemish museums, amid the great crowds of burgomasters by Van der Helst, and it would hold its own… Courbet, before long, will be one of our greatest artists.”
It was claimed that this work had been painted with litharge on the background, which was fading away. It should be recognised that the subject called for this penumbra, since the scene is set in the late afternoon, perhaps at twilight, after the hunt. In a letter to Francis Wey of 28 November 1849, Courbet even referred to this painting as the Soiree à Ornans (Evening at Ornans). It is undeniable that it looked dark; but this is true of all the paintings of this period, in particular those by Courbet, who at that time was fully into his période noire. As he explained to Francis Wey, at the Salon of 1849 itself:
“That’s the way I see; you can’t reproduce an artificial colour which is not real to you; that would be the false art of Ingres and the others. If brighter light is necessary, I will think about it, and when I see it, it will be done, without my deciding to do so.”
Thus did he justify, once again, the description that he gave of himself, as “the pupil of nature and feeling,” and which his next works would bear out even further.
21. Portrait of H. J. Van Wisselingh, 1846.
Oil on panel, 57.2 × 46 cm.
Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth.
The First Successes of Realism
22. Self-Portrait, c. 1850.
Oil on mounted canvas, 50 × 40 cm.
Musée des Beaux-Arts et d’Archéologie, Besançon.
Courbet’s First Successes
At the beginning of the summer, Courbet went to stay in Louveciennes for two months, at the home of Francis Wey. As he put it himself, he needed to “fatten up”. According to the Mémoires inédits, he was skinnier and paler than ever, but once in the country he soon recovered his appetite. He became the life of the party at meals with his unexpected and original jokes, his high spirits and affability attracting neighbours and friends, who were anxious to be invited and curious to see and hear him, although they were likewise sure that at “every conversation they would be called idiots in a most congenial way.”
In Louveciennes, he wasted no time, painting on everything, even cigar boxes, most often with a palette knife. The artist did not limit himself to scenes of Louveciennes and the environs. One morning he painted Madame Wey, who was then convalescing after a long illness, sitting in front of a wooded hillside in a misty atmosphere. “This sort of miniature, painted broadly, is the lone example in his work of this style and manner.” The painter stayed in this charming retreat for two months, then was off to Ornans.
His father had had a studio built for him, “of respectable dimensions, but the window was too small, and in the wrong position”. At once, “I had one three times as large put in; now it is as bright in there as in the street.” On the 26th of November, he explained the chance encounter that had led him to paint The Stone Breakers; “I had taken our carriage; I was going to the castle of Saint-Denis, near Maizières. I stopped to watch two men