As enormous as the work required for this had been, Courbet’s energy was still not exhausted. In addition to the landscapes around the ruins of the Saint-Denis tower, in Scey-en-Varais, that he would paint for relaxation, he began a third very large composition, Peasants of Flagey returning from the Fair, also known as Return from the Fair.
This burst of activity took up the winter of 1849–1850. Courbet inquired whether the Salon would be held in the month of May, in which case he was afraid that he wouldn’t have time to finish everything for the exhibition. This was a needless concern since, owning to political events (conflict between the Legislative Assembly and the prince-president, Louis Napoleon, with a gradual build-up to the coup d’Etat) the Salon was put off until the 30th of December 1850.
At the same time, Courbet complained of not hearing from his friend Wey, and he thought the reason was that he had not sent his condolences at the death of Wey’s father. Thus he decided to apologise in a most peculiar way. He stated that did not grieve for the deceased because he was convinced that one grieved only for selfish reasons. Additionally, one man’s life was “not directly useful to another’s” and there are better ways to use one’s time than to grieve for the departed. Sorrow was a good thing, but it had to be shared in person, never by letter and if it weren’t that he was afraid of tiring him, he would write him “four pages” of it. His abstention was not an oversight and it should be taken for what it was, and not for what it was supposed to be. This instance is very telling about Courbet psychologically; here we see the troublesome tendency of his mind to philosophise about feelings and ideas, when in fact it was better able to grasp daily situations. The painter took himself for a philosopher, just as he did a musician. That would be the cause of all his difficulties, in art as in politics. He had been born a marvellous instinctive artist; instinctive he should have remained.
Another letter to Wey revealed a new preoccupation; “In our civilised society, I must lead the life of a savage; I must free myself even from governments. My sympathies lie with the people; I must go to them directly, I must draw my wisdom from them, and they must give me life. For that reason, I have just embarked on the grand, independent and vagabond life of the bohemian.”
Therefore, he set up two exhibitions of his works, in Besançon and Dijon, and decided that they would have an entrance fee. In Besançon, the mayor made the concert hall in the central market pavilion available to Courbet for free. More than two hundred and fifty people, “presenting 50 centimes from their pockets, their very own pockets”, came to see the works. It was a different story in Dijon, in late July. With soldiers camped everywhere, the mayor had no available space and Courbet had to rent a room in a cafe building. In addition, the city was divided into two clearly opposing camps, the Reds, republicans, and the Whites, conservatives, and the cafe in question was run by a Red, and patronised exclusively by persons of his persuasion. Not a single White came to see the exhibition, and the republicans alone, whether because their purses were flat or because art was of little interest to them, could not make up for this. Courbet, their partisan, had in fact reversed his earlier decision to require an entry fee, and since he was renting the room at ten francs a day, he quickly packed up “without covering his expenses” and went back to Paris.
No sooner had he arrived than artists “of all sorts” and “society people also” came to see his new works. Everyone agreed that they would make a huge impression at the next Salon. “Their fame is all over Paris; wherever I go, everyone talks about them.”
Courbet as a Socialist Painter
The Salon for the years 1850–1851 opened its doors at last on the 30th of December 1850. The regulations determined that there would be two juries; one for acceptances, nominated by the artists, the other in charge of awarding prizes, composed of thirteen elected members and of seventeen appointed by the minister of the Interior. All the works submitted by Courbet had been accepted. They were: A Burial at Ornans, Peasants of Flagey returning from the Fair, The Stone Breakers, Portrait of Monsieur Jean Journet, View and Ruins of the Castle of Scey-en-Varais, Banks of the Loue on the way to Maizières, Portrait of Hector Berlioz and Man with a Pipe. Scandal and success were immediate and enormous; “The works of Courbet are causing quite a stir, widely attacked, and widely defended. This fellow has his disparagers and his fans; he is none the less one of the leading players of the Salon.” Courbet was the subject of every conversation, some claimed that he was a former labourer, carpenter, or mason, others a staunch socialist, many denying that he had any aptitude for painting anything but peasants. Among the “detractors” was Philippe de Chennevières, in his Lettres de l’Art français (Letters on French Art):
“The Burial at Ornus (as the Salon catalogue had printed it), is a vulgar and blasphemous caricature, a signboard painting, which is full of hatred even for art; what a sad thing, in fact, when a true talent tries to win the facile and extravagant applause of the nineteenth century through the exaggeration of ugliness!”
28. Preparation of the Dead Girl, c. 1850–1855.
Oil on canvas, 195.6 × 251.5 cm.
Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton.
29. Firemen hurrying to a Fire, 1850–1851.
Oil on canvas, 388 × 580 cm.
Petit Palais – Musée des beaux-arts de la ville de Paris, Paris.
30. After Dinner at Ornans, 1848–1849.
Oil on canvas, 195 × 257 cm.
Palais des Beaux-Arts, Lille.
Courtois, in the Corsaire of the 14th of January 1851, was also of the opinion that this painting showed a true predilection for ugliness; “a disgusting canvas represents a burial at l’Ornus… It makes you recoil at the idea of being buried at l’Ornus! And I couldn’t say if it would be much better to be born there amidst such ugly people.” Some compare Courbet to the Flemish painters, though they would never have painted life-sized characters in such a scene.
“Never before perhaps,” exclaimed J. Delécluze, “has ugliness been glorified more blatantly than this time by Monsieur Courbet. The scene suggests a daguerreotype that didn’t turn out; the beadles are base caricatures, both disgusting and laughable. Realism is a brutal system of painting which defiles and degrades art, and, in spite of the very real qualities of its advocate, he puts himself forward in this way with an almost cynical boldness.”
P. Hussard, in the National complained that his eye and his mind had suffered “the searing pains of ugliness… and the abysmal revulsion of baseness.” It was also the opinion of Peisse at the Constitutionnel; “He confuses truth with reality; he brings observation down to the level of a descriptive inventory. It is brutal, rather than intellectual; his analysis is not carried through with that life-giving synthesis. Nothing is less true that the real; the closer one gets to the one, the farther from the other; truth is what is permanent about things, and characteristic of their nature; reality, on the other, is merely the product of accidental details. The permanent is the ideal for which to strive; the role of art is to make the ideal real.” Théophile Gautier; “We don’t know whether we should cry or laugh. Did the author intend to make a caricature or a serious painting?” The women’s portraits would tend to point towards the serious side, “but the two beadles, with their faces blotched with vermillion, their drunken appearance, their red robes and their ribbed caps, look doltish enough to make Daumier jealous. The Charivari offers its subscribers no satires more bizarre than this… There are also heads which are reminiscent of signs from tobacco stores and menageries with their Caribbean outlandishness of their shape and colour.” In addition, many serious mistakes of composition were pointed out, including the horizontal arrangement of the characters and the absence of depth