Gustave Courbet

Jean Désiré Gustave Courbet ( born June 10, 1819 in Ornans in Besançon; † 31 December 1877 in La-Tour-de-Peilz/Schweiz ) was a French painter of realism.

• 2.1 Gallery ( selection)

Life

Family and early years

Courbet grew up in a middle-class family in the Eastern French Jura. At the request of his parents, he studied law at the college from 1837 Royal at Besançon, but he devoted himself more quickly drawing and started out after one year to take drawing lessons at Charles Antoine Flajoulot.

In 1840 he left Besancon, officially to take legal courses in Paris, but he took there on teaching and developed his technique by copying the local art works mainly Spanish and Dutch masters in the Louvre and other museums. He tried to take charge of his works at the Paris Salon, but only three of his 20 pictures submitted were adopted in the years 1841 to 1847, in 1844 his self-portrait with black dog. He lived on the financial support of his family. In 1847 he had with his lover Virginie Binet a son, but she left him in 1850 and took the boy with.

The realism

Courbet met around the corner is from his studio Brasserie Andler, the "Temple of realism " as called him Jules Champ Fleury, with other artists and intellectuals such as Charles Baudelaire, Pierre -Joseph Proudhon and Max Buchon, with whom he already since childhood was a friend. In this round, the new art movement of realism developed.

In 1848, after the abdication of Louis Philippe, the Paris Salon was held without a jury, and Courbet exhibited ten of his paintings, which have been enthusiastically received by critics. In 1849 he was awarded a gold medal for his painting After dinner in Ornans, the image was acquired by the state. So he painted many scenes from Ornans and portraits of his family and friends. A Burial at Ornans, 1850/51 rejected by critics of the salon because it violated the religious feelings, is now considered most impressive example of this creative period. Courbet's reputation grew through the sensation which he caused. His pictures were suspect in their realism that made the simplicity worthy of depiction, the new bourgeois regime. The apparent threat grew through the interpretations among others Pierre Proudhon gave his pictures, even if Courbet this probably never even intended. Some of his works are adjacent to the L' art pour l'art.

Courbet was the chief representative of realistic painting in France and thus had a far-reaching influence on the development of the subsequent painting, particularly the realist painters in Germany.

The counter- exhibition to Paris Salon

1853 presented the Courbet government promised to paint for the World Exhibition in 1855 a large-sized image, if he would submit a draft for approval before a jury. Courbet refused, however, since he in his artistic freedom not want to be circumcised. After three of the fourteen submitted by him for exhibition images were rejected for the Universal Exhibition ( including the allegory of the artist's studio ), he erected parallel with the financial support of his friend and promoter Alfred Bruyas its own pavilion you Réalisme. In this shown at the World Exhibition another forty paintings were shown in addition to the eleven.

When Gustave Courbet is evident in the paintings created from 1860, an egalitarian surface structure. Regardless of the subject and on the spatial depth of view, the colors were distributed on the canvas. In this way he reached that the prevailing leveled items in their dominance: The landscape was no longer the nature and the figure is no longer subordinated to the landscape. All image elements joined to a spatial plane together visually. Courbet relied spatula alternately with the brush, and thereby generated a relatively uniform, only slightly impasto surface. This technique was taken up in modified form by other artists, including, for example, Oswald Achenbach.

Personal situation

His friends had been arrested during the revolutionary situation in Paris or gone into exile, or had been politically developed in other directions. Thus Courbet decided to take long trips. He only came to Frankfurt am Main, where he presented the Academy of Art provides a studio and celebrated him as a celebrity. The next goal was Trouville- sur -Mer, where he painted seascapes and portraits of the local beauties and was able to sell profitably, and the painter James McNeill Whistler met together with its beloved Joanna Hiffernan. There was Etretat, where he met the young Claude Monet.

Courbet exhibited in Germany, Belgium and England and has won many awards. The cross of the Legion of Honour, offered to him, together with Honoré Daumier 1870 both rejected, however. They were of the view that the state should have no influence on artistic matters. This attitude brought Courbet in the Republican camp a lot of friends, and after the overthrow of the government he was elected in 1869 as president of the Republican Art Commission and the following year to the City Council and thus to a member of the Paris Commune.

The last years

After the violent suppression of the Commune, he was convicted for his involvement in the destruction of the Colonne Vendôme to six months imprisonment and 500 francs fine. He was serving the sentence in the prison of Sainte- Pélagie in Paris, but there could paint.

His health worsened in the following years. In the hospital Neuilly, he painted 50 pictures that he could sell them all. In May 1873, the new French government demanded compensation for the destroyed Colonne Vendôme in the amount of 335,000 francs; he fled to Switzerland, then to apply it in the familiar Jura and the Lake of Geneva, without hope, the required huge sum by selling images.

In La Tour de Peilz he spent his last years, always in the hope of debt relief. He participated actively in art shows in Geneva, Lausanne, Neuchâtel and other places of Switzerland. Finally, he fell ill with dropsy and died on 31 December 1877. His remains were transferred exactly 100 years later to Ornans.

Works

• Self-Portrait with Black Dog ( 1842)
• Drawn Le désespéré ( private collection), 1843-45, oil on canvas, 45 x 54 cm, emphatic self-portrait, face and gesture of violent fright
• Man with Pipe ( 1848-49 ), oil on canvas, size 45 x 37 cm, Musée Fabre, Montpelier. The self-portrait is a relatively popular image of him three copies were made. It shows him smoking hashish.
• The Stone Breakers (formerly Dresden, Gemäldegalerie - lost in the war ), 1849, oil on canvas, 165 x 257 cm
• Steinhauer (Milan, private collection), 1849, oil on canvas, 45 x 54.5 cm
• A Burial at Ornans (Paris, Musée d' Orsay ), 1850, oil on canvas, 314 x 663 cm

• Farmers of Flagey on the Return From The Market ( Besancon, Musee des Beaux -Arts ), 1850, oil on canvas, 208.5 x 275.5 cm
• Wrestler (Budapest, Museum of Fine Arts ), 1853, oil on canvas, 252 x 199 cm
• Sleeping Spinner (Montpellier, Musée Fabre ), 1853, oil on canvas, 91 x 115 cm
• The quarry of Optevoz (Munich, Neue Pinakothek ), 1854, oil on canvas, 63.6 x 84.5 cm
• The encounter - Bonjour, Monsieur Courbet (Montpellier, Musée Fabre ), 1854, oil on canvas, 129 x 149 cm

• La roche de dix heures at Ornans (Paris, Musée d' Orsay ), 1855, oil on canvas, 85.5 x 160 cm
• Sitting on cushions dog (Baden, Museum Matt Long ), 1855, oil on canvas, 38 x 46 cm
• The artist's studio (Paris, Musée d' Orsay ), 1855, oil on canvas, 359 x 598 cm
• Grain Sifters (Nantes, Musée des Beaux -Arts ), 1855, oil on canvas, 131 x 167 cm
• Girls on the Seine (Paris, Musée du Petit-Palais ), 1856, oil on canvas, 174 x 206 cm
• The loot - Hunting with dogs (Boston, Museum of Fine Arts), 1857, oil on canvas, 210 x 180 cm
• Louis Gueymard as Robert le Diable (Louis Gueymard dans le rôle de Robert le Diable, New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art), 1857, oil on canvas, 148.6 x 106.7 cm
• Lady on the terrace (Cologne, Wallraf -Richartz Museum ), 1858, oil on canvas, 207 x 325 cm
• Fox in the Snow ( Dallas, Museum of Arts), 1860, oil on canvas, 86 x 128 cm
• Rocky landscape (Budapest, Museum of Fine Arts ), about 1862, oil on canvas, 73 x 92 cm
• Grassy slope at Ornans (Kassel, Neue Galerie ), 1862, oil on canvas, 99.8 x 132 cm
• Horse in the forest (Mannheim, Kunsthalle ), 1863, oil on canvas, 108 x 133 cm
• Rocky river valley (Paris, Musée d' Orsay ), 1865, oil on canvas, 94 x 135 cm
• Landscape at Maiziers (Munich, Neue Pinakothek, inv. No. 8649 ), 1865, oil on canvas, 50 x 65 cm
• Portrait of Countess Karoly ( Private Collection ), 1865, oil on canvas
• Girl with gulls (New York, collection Deely ), 1865, oil on canvas, 81 x 65 cm
• The shady Bach (Vienna, Österreichische Galerie, Inv. No. 944 ), 1865, oil on canvas, 92.7 x 133.3 cm
• Of the village in winter (Frankfurt, Städel ) to 1865-70, oil on canvas, 44 x 54 cm
• Jo, the Beautiful Irishwoman ( Jo, la belle irlandaise; New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art), 1866, oil on canvas, 55.9 x 66 cm

• L' Origine du monde (Paris, Musée d' Orsay ), 1866, oil on canvas, 55 x 46 cm
• Woman with a Parrot (La femme au perroquet; New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art), 1866, oil on canvas, 129.5 x 195.6 cm
• Young Bather ( La jeune baigneuse; New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art), 1866, oil on canvas, 130.2 x 97.2 cm
• The sleepers - sloth and lust (Paris, Musée du Petit-Palais ), 1866, oil on canvas, 140 x 200 cm
• The wounded man (Vienna, Österreichische Galerie, Inv. No. 2376 ), about 1866, oil on canvas, 79.5 x 99.5 cm
• Sea coast in Normandy (Moscow, Pushkin Museum ), 1867, oil on canvas, 105 x 128 cm
• Roebuck in the forest ( Paris, Musée d' Orsay ), 1867, oil on canvas, 94 x 131 cm
• The Woman in the Waves (La femme à la vague; New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art), 1868, oil on canvas, 65 x 54 cm
• Landscape with tree (Budapest, Museum of Fine Arts ), 1868, oil on canvas, 69 x 89 cm
• Forest with deer creek (London, Chester Beatty collection ), 1868, oil on canvas, 155 x 112 cm
• The waves ( Philadelphia Museum of Art), 1869, oil on canvas, 76 x 151 cm
• The Wave (Winterthur, Oskar Reinhart Collection ), 1870, oil on canvas, 80 x 100 cm
• Apples and Pomegranates (London, National Gallery ), 1871, oil on canvas, 44 x 61 cm
• Apple still life (Munich, Neue Pinakothek, inv. No. 8623 ), 1871, oil on canvas, 50.4 x 63.4 cm
• Pomegranates (Glasgow, Art Gallery and Museum ), 1871, oil on canvas, 18 x 37 cm
• Lake Neuchatel (Budapest, Museum of Fine Arts ), 1875, oil on canvas, 50 x 60 cm

Gallery ( selection)

Wrestler (1853 )

The encounter - Bonjour, Monsieur Courbet (1854 )

Grain Sifters (1855 )

Pierre -Joseph Proudhon and his children (1865 )

The sleepers - sloth and lust (1866 )

The Cliffs at Etretat after the storm (1866 )

Lunch break during the hay harvest (1867 )

The Woman in the Waves (1868 )

The Trout (1871 )

Beach at Normandy (around 1872-1875 )

Lake Geneva at sunset (1876 )