Gustave Courbet: Master of Realism

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The text below is the excerpt of the book Gustave Courbet (ISBN: 9781783107650), written by Georges Riat, published by Parkstone International.

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Gustave Courbet was a French painter who lived from 1819 to 1877. He is considered one of the pioneers of the 19th-century Realist movement in art. Courbet rejected the idealized and romanticized depictions of subjects prevalent in the art world of his time and instead focused on portraying ordinary people and scenes from everyday life with unflinching realism. His works often depicted rural life, landscapes, and ordinary people engaged in mundane activities, capturing the raw beauty and truth of the world around him. Courbet’s bold and revolutionary approach to painting paved the way for modern art movements and had a significant influence on subsequent generations of artists.

The artist Jean-Désiré-Gustave Courbet was born in Ornans on the 10th of June 1819. Most of Courbet’s biographers say that he was of farming stock, and was a farmer himself. The latter statement is wrong, while the former should be clarified. His father, Régis Courbet, was an important landowner. He owned an estate on a plateau, which although fragmented, as was often the case in Franche-Comté, spread over the communities of Flagey, Silley and Chantrans.

The Desperate Man, 1844-1845, Gustave Courbet — *Portrait of the Artist*, known as *The Desperate Man*, 1844-1845. Oil on canvas, 45 x 54 cm. Private collection.

A letter from Max Buchon to Champfleury depicts Régis Courbet in a lively, picturesque way: “The father is much more idealistic, a constant talker and nature-lover, sober as an Arab, tall, longlegged, quite handsome in his youth, immensely affectionate, never knowing what time it is, never wearing out his clothes, a seeker of ideas and agricultural innovations, who invented his own special harrow, and who, in spite of the fact that he had a wife and daughters to support, farmed in a way that made him little profit.” The old folks in the area still recall that “improved” harrow, which destroyed the crops, as well as a certain carriage, with a fifth wheel on the back which held the food baskets for the hunt. These inventions and a few others in the same vein earned him the nickname, cudot, which in the local dialect described someone possessed by pipe-dreams. He was on the whole an excellent fellow who, had he been more practical, would have let out his lands to sharecroppers and lived the life of a country squire.

Courbet’s mother, Sylvie Oudot, was a relative of the jurist Oudot, a professor of law in Paris, and was quite different. A hard-working woman, constantly busy patching up the damage from her husband’s blunders and hare-brained schemes, she was the one who actually ran the farm, while still found the time to bring up her children and relax in the evenings by playing the flute.

Woman in White Stockings, c. 1861, Gustave Courbet — *Woman in White Stockings*, c. 1861. Oil on canvas, 65 x 81 cm. The Barnes Foundation, Merion.

Gustave was the firstborn. After him came three daughters, whom the artist quite often included within his paintings, most notably in Young Women from the Village. They were the somewhat sickly Zélie, who played the guitar; the overly sentimental Zoé, who had a fiery imagination; and Juliette, the youngest, lively and devout, and who at an early age fell in love with the piano. Added to this family circle were Grandfather and Grandmother Oudot, objects of Courbet’s constant affection, so the artist grew up in an atmosphere which was much more bourgeois than peasant, though not so bourgeois that the young man was deprived of the wonders of nature, and not so peasant that there was any question of his becoming anything but an educated professional.

At first glance, it is easy to see the imprint of both nature and nurture upon Courbet’s personality. His Grandfather Jean-Antoine Oudot, a raging revolutionary of 1793 and fervent follower of Voltaire, taught him by example to espouse republican, anticlerical ideas; his father’s outrageous behaviour explains some of his own, as well as his pride, vanity, and pursuit of glory; from his mother he received, in spite of appearances, a refinement and thoughtfulness, examples of which are plentiful throughout his life, but which he kept carefully hidden from all but those closest to him. His long ancestry of wine growers and farmers also made him a man of the soil, a terrien, with all that this word implies in terms of health, robustness, perseverance, determined possessiveness and occasionally a certain vulgarity, along with an uncompromising frankness and a roughness of character. In short, he inherited that rare flame of genius that made it possible for him to become one of the greatest artists who ever lived.

Villager with a Kid, 1860, Gustave Courbet — *Villager with a Kid*, 1860. Oil on canvas, 81 x 65 cm. Musée Gustave-Courbet, Ornans.

In 1831, his parents sent him to the lower seminary in Ornans, which prepared pupils not only for the upper seminary, but also for secular careers. Courbet did not do well there, being unable to take an interest in Latin, Greek or mathematics and frequently playing hooky. He was known for his skill in chasing butterflies and his knowledge of the surrounding trails, so much so that he was picked to be the guide on Sunday outings.

Some of the Gustave Courbet’s artworks: