It was later said that the The Stone Breakers was the first socialist work by the painter. However, this letter to Francis Wey, and another to Champfleury couched in nearly identical terms, show that he was initially moved only by pity for the dispossessed, and not at all by the idea of stinging social protest. His ambitions were elsewhere towards the end of 1849; he was still more concerned with art than politics, and art was what he wanted to reform. He believed that the painting he then had underway, called A Burial at Ornans, would contribute greatly to that cause.
As he told Champfleury, all the Ornans folk were eager to be part of A Burial at Ornans. Being obliged to choose his characters, he was afraid of making lots of enemies:
“I’ve already done studies of the mayor, who weighs 400, the parish priest, the justice of the peace, the cross bearer, the notary, Marlet, the assistant mayor, my friends, my father, the choirboys, the grave digger, two old revolutionaries from ‘93 with their uniforms of that time, a dog, the dead man and his pallbearers, the beadles, my sisters, other women too, and so on. I was planning to skip the two parish cantors, but there was no way around it. People came to warn me that they were offended, that they were the only ones from the church that I hadn’t drawn. They were complaining vociferously, saying that they had never done me any harm, and that they didn’t deserve such an affront. You have to be mad to work under the conditions I’m in; it’s like working with blinkers on. I have no room to stand back and see the whole. Will I never have a space to work as I should? Anyway, I am about to finish fifty subjects, life-sized, with landscape and sky as the background, on a canvas twenty feet long by ten high.”
When you look at it closely, A Burial at Ornans is less a genre scene than a group of portraits. The idea was new, or at least a renewal of the guild paintings of Van der Helst, Franz Hals and Rembrandt. All these faces are recognisable.
They are arranged around an open grave, below the Roche Founèche that Courbet so loved, with the Roche du Mont and the Roche du Château in the background, under a sickly white sky. On the left is the priest, Monsieur Bonnet, bald-headed, reading the prayers for the dead and wearing a black cape trimmed in silver. Behind him stands the cross bearer, the wine maker Colart; then Cauchi, the sacristan, likewise in a white surplice, and black biretta, like the kind they wore in those days, triangular, very tall and topped with a pompon. The two choirboys are next, one paying attention, the other watching one of the pallbearers. In the left-hand corner, four men carry the coffin, which is draped in a black and white cloth decorated with crossbones. They each hold the handles of the stretcher with one hand, with the other a strip of cloth, which goes around their shoulders and passes under the coffin. On their heads are wide-brimmed hats, which the hatter Alphonse Cuenot rented out for funerals. They avert their heads in a way that is very realistic, given that country burials were usually conducted fairly late, the body often beginning to putrefy by then. On the side toward the rocks, the pallbearers are, on the right, Alphonse Bon, and, on the left, Alphonse Promayet. On the other side are Etienne Nodier and the elder Crevot. Behind them, touching the frame, is the old wine maker Oudot, grandfather of the artist, and, above Alphonse Bon’s hat can be seen, in profile, the head of the poet Max Buchon.
The central group can be divided in two. On the left is old Cassard the gravedigger in shirtsleeves, kneeling on his smock. Behind, the two beadles, in red choir robes with black velvet yokes, wear ribbed red caps. This dress has not changed, and its bright colour and unique shape can still be seen in Ornans today. The beadle on the right is the wine grower J.-B. Muselier, and the one on the left, with the extraordinary nose, the cobbler Pierre Clément. Between him and the priest is Promayet, the organist and father of Alphonse, wearing a white surplice and a black cap.
23. Mère Grégoire, 1855/1857–1859.
Oil on canvas, 129 × 97.5 cm.
The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago.
24. Peasant Girl with a Scarf, c. 1848.
Oil on canvas, 60 × 73 cm.
Norton Simon Art Foundation, Pasadena.
25. Portrait of Zélie Courbet, 1853.
Oil on canvas, 55 × 46 cm.
Musée des Beaux-Arts, Nancy.
26. Grandmother Salvan’s Tales, 1847.
Oil on canvas, 61 × 50 cm.
Curtis Galleries, Minneapolis.
27. Portrait of a Young Girl from Ornans, 1842.
Oil on canvas, 71 × 57 cm.
Musée Gustave-Courbet, Ornans.
On the gravedigger’s right, standing upright in his black frock coat and holding his top hat appears Monsieur Proudhon, cousin of the philosopher, deputy justice of the peace. Behind is the mayor, Prosper Teste de Sagey, whose simple appearance contrasts with his neighbour’s. Near him is Bertin, wiping his face with his handkerchief, and above him Courbet’s father, in right profile. Beside him is Adolphe Marlet, a friend of the artist; then Sage, in a top hat and the deputy mayor, Tony Marlet the younger, who had studied law in Paris. Finally, near a magnificent pointer that has wandered into the cemetery, probably not unusual in a village during such ceremonies, are the two veterans of 1793, dressed the French style of breeches, white and blue stockings and pumps, decorated waistcoats, wide cravats and old-style bicorne hats. On the right is old Monsieur Secrétan, a wine maker, his hand outstretched, and on the left is old Monsieur Cardet, his arms crossed, looking thoughtful.
The women fill the right-hand portion of the painting, separated from the men, as in church. The artist’s mother is against the edge of the canvas, seen from the left in three-quarter view, wearing a black coiffe and holding the hand of a pretty girl, who is Teste’s daughter. Her own three daughters are behind the veterans of 1793; Juliette is on the left, a handkerchief over her mouth, in the centre is the exuberant Zoé, her face hidden in grief and on the right is the thoughtful Zélie. The woman in the hooded cape is “the” Joséphine Bocquin, and Promayet’s mother, Célestine Garmont, is also there, her bonnet falling in large folds. Françoise, the wife of Alexandre the hunchback, is next, then Félicité Bon, wife of Gagey the stone breaker, the fourth in the first row, by some rocks.
A drawing, which is now in the museum of Besançon, shows the first conception of A Burial at Ornans, which is definitely not as satisfactory as the final version. Courbet had first seen the cortège as moving towards the grave, the priest, the pallbearers