The Rhetoric of Realism

1
The Rhetoric of Realism

• Courbet and the Origins of the Avant-Garde

When I am dead let this be said of me 'He
belonged to no school, to no church, to no
institution, to no academy, least of all to any
régime except the régime of liberty. Gus
tave Courbet, 1869
2
Honoré Daumier (French, 18081879), Gargantua,
1831, lithograph, Bibliotheque Nationale de
France, Paris. Caricature of King Louis Phillip
as Gargantua (satire by François Rabelais, 1494 -
1553) led to Daumier's imprisonment for six
months at St. Pelagic in 1832.
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(left) Honoré Daumier, Pygmalion, from the
"Ancient History" Series, 1842, lithograph,
Bibliotheque Nationale de France, Paris,
France(right) Anne-Louis Girodet, Pygmalion and
Galatea, 1813-19, oil on canvas 99 x 115 in.
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Honoré Daumier (French, 1808-1879), The Uprising,
1848 or later, oil on canvas, 34 x 44 in. The
Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.
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Honoré Daumier, Ratapoil, 1851, bronze, 17 in.,
Musée d'Orsay, Paris, France. Ratapoil means
skinned rat  a government agent
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Jean-Hippolyte Flandrin (French, 1809-1864),
Napoleon III, 1860-61, oil on canvas, 83 x 58in.
Ruler of the Second French Empire (1852-1870) and
the last monarch of France.
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Honoré Daumier, The Third-Class Carriage, ca.
186264, oil on canvas, 25 ¾ x 35 ½ in.,
Metropolitan MA, NYC
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Jean-François Millet (1814 - 1875) The Gleaners,
1857, Musée d'Orsay, Paris. Barbison school and
Realism influenced by Daumiers paintings.
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Jean-François Millet (French Realist, 1814-1875),
The Sower, oil on canvas, 40 x 33 in. 1850.
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
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Gustave Courbet (French, 1819-1877)
Self-Portrait, c. 1845Théodore Gèricault,
Portrait of an Insane Woman (envy), 1822, Musée
des Beaux-arts de Lyon, France
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Gustave Courbet, The Man With the Leather Belt,
1845-46oil on canvas, 39 x 32in. Paris, Musée
d'Orsay
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Gustave Courbet, Portrait of the Artist (Wounded
Man) 1844-54 Oil on canvas , 32 x 38in, Musee
d'Orsay, Paris
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Gustave Courbet, The Stone Breakers, 1849
(destroyed during World War II), oil on canvas,
63 in x 8ft 6in.
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Gustave Courbet, A Burial at Ornans 1849-1850,
oil on canvas, 10ft 3in x 21ft 9 in., Musee
d'Orsay, Paris
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Gustave Courbet, Burial at Ornans, 1849 compare
with (below) Thomas Couture, Romans of the
Decadence, 1847
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William Bouguereau, (left) Mother and Children,
The Rest, 1879 (right) Home From the Harvest,
1878, Cummer Museum of Art, Jacksonville, Florida
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William Bouguereau, The Broken Pitcher, 1891the
De Young MA, San Francisco
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Early 19th century French Épinal print
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Gustave Courbet (French, 18191877), The Peasants
of Flagey Returning from the Fair, 185055, oil
on canvas, 83 x 109 in. Musée des Beaux-Arts et
d'Archéologie, Besançon, France
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Rosa Bonheur (French, 1822-1899), Plowing in
Nivernais (Labourages Nivernais), 1850, oil on
canvas, 52 1/2 x 102 in. Ringling Museum,
Sarasota, Florida
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Gustave Courbet, The Painter's Studio A Real
Allegory Summing up Seven Years of My Artistic
Life, 1855, oil on canvas, 12ft x 19ft 8in 1/2in,
Musée d'Orsay, Paris
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• I have studied, outside of any system and
  without prejudice, the art of the ancients and of
  the Moderns. I no more wanted to imitate the one
  than to copy the other nor, furthermore, was it
  my intuition to attain the trivial goal of art
  for art's sake. No! I simply wanted to draw
  forth from a complete acquaintance with tradition
  the reasoned and independent consciousness of my
  own individuality"
• "To know in order to be able to create, that was
  my idea. To be in a position to translate the
  customs, the ideas, the appearance of my epoch,
  according to my own estimation to be not only a
  painter, but a man as well in short, to create
  living art - this is my goal.
• Gustave Courbet, statement for the Pavilion of
  Realism, built next to the Paris International
  Exhibition of 1855

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The French government signed an armistice with
the Prussians on 28 February 1871. On 18 March
1871, the Commune of Paris was declared. Until 28
May 1871, the Commune reigned in Paris - a
worker's insurrection whose red banners hinted at
worker's revolutions to come in the early 20th
century some 46 years later.(left) Destruction
of Paris following the Franco-Prussian war, siege
of Paris, and (right) after the Commune 1871,
Communards shot by firing squad of French
soldiers (in the streets of Paris).
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Courbet as Communard, and the destruction of the
Vendome column, symbol of Napoleonic imperialism
and the power of Napoleon III"Inasmuch as the
Vendôme column is a monument devoid of all
artistic value, tending to perpetuate by its
expression the ideas of war and conquest of the
past imperial dynasty, which are reproved by a
republican nation's sentiment, citizen Courbet
expresses the wish that the National Defense
government will authorise him to disassemble this
column. Courbet
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Gustave Courbet, Self-Portrait at Sainte-Pelagie,
1872 Imprisoned for Communard activities, this
is Courbets last self-portrait
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Gustave Courbet, Panoramic View of the Alps, Les
Dents du Midi The Teeth of the South, 1877,
Cleveland Museum of Art. Painted in exile in
Switzerland, lower right unfinished at artists
death in 1877.
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Pre-Raphaelites
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John Everett Millais (British, 1829-1896), Christ
in the House of His Parents (The Carpenter's
Shop'), 1850, oil on canvas, 33 x 54 in. Tate,
London.
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William Holman Hunt, The Awakening Conscience,
1853, oil on canvas, 29 x 22 in. Tate, London
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Ford Madox Brown, Work, 1852-65, oil on canvas,
arched top, 54 x 78 in. Manchester City Art
Galleries, Manchester, England. Mental
laborers on the right socialist philosophers
Frederick Denison Maurice (right) and Thomas
Carlyle (left)
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The contrast of labor and idleness in Browns
Work continues on the gold frame, which contains
Biblical quotations about the virtue and
importance of hard work.