Gustave Courbet

Gustave Courbet (June 10th 1819 with Ornans, Doubs - December 31st 1877 with Turn-with-Peilz in the Swiss one) is a painter French leader of the realistic current . Engaged in the political movements of its time, it was one of the elected of the Commune of 1871.

Biography

Childhood and training

Gustave Courbet is resulting from a family of landowners, his/her father Régis Billhook has grounds at the village of Flagey where it raises bovines and practical agriculture. He is born on June 10th, 1819 with Ornans in the Doubs, his mother Sylvie born Oudot gives rise to also four girls. After having studied with the small seminar of Ornans it enters to the Royal college of Besancon where, in the class of the fine arts it takes to its artistic lessons of Charles-Antoine Flajoulot (1774-1840) former student of Jacques Louis David and also professor with the École of the Art schools of Besancon. After studies considered as poor and that it gives up, it leaves for Paris towards the end 1839. Placed by his cousin Jules Oudot, it follows studies of right and in parallel attends the workshop of the painter Charles de Steuben. His/her friend of childhood Adolphe Marlet introduces it with the workshop of Nicolas-Auguste Hesse a painter of history which encourages it in the artistic way. Billhook also goes to the Musée of Louvre to study the Masters there, in particular the painters of the Spanish school of XVIIère century Vélasquez, Zurbaran and Ribera. It is also influenced by works of Géricault of which it copies a head of horse.

Beginning of career

June 21st, 1840 it is reformed military service. It settles with the Latin Quarter and occupies its first workshop street of the Toothing-stone. In 1842 it paints a first self-portrait known as `' Self-portrait with the black dog' follow others where it is represented as a wounded man or a man with the pipe. In 1845 he proposes several fabrics for the Living room, the jury chooses to make expose the Guitarrero . He has a relation with Virginia Binet from which he has a child that he does not recognize. At that time Courbet binds friendship with Baudelaire and Champfleury. The art poet and critic write for the painter the list of his works for the Living room of 1849.

In August 1849 it goes on a journey in Holland where it discovers paintings of Frans Hals and Rembrandt.

Return to Ornans and first chiefs of works

In 1849 Billhook returns in Ornans, this return to the sources will change its manner of painting making it give up the romantic style of its first self-portraits and its Nuit of Walpurgis . Inspired by its soil it created a style which he describes itself as realism. Its first work of this period is after-dined in Ornans table exposed to the living room on 1849 which is worth a medal of second class to him, and which is noticed by Ingres and Delacroix.

It paints a burial with Ornans , table ambitious whose large size is usually intended for the tables of history, which represents a burial where appear several notable of Ornans and the members of its family. With the living room of 1850 during its exposure the table makes scandal near criticism just as its Stone breakers greeted like the first socialist work by Proudhon.

The Commune and the Vendôme column

Its republican ideas and Socialists make him refuse the Légion of honor proposed by Napoleon III. After the proclamation of the Republic on September 4th, 1870, it is named president of the commission of the museums and delegated to the Art schools like chair transitory Fédération of the Artists.

He proposes with the Gouvernement of National defense the displacement of the Colonne Vendôme, which evokes the Napoleonean Guerres, with the Invalides. Supporting the action of the Common of Paris, he is elected with the Conseil of the Commune by the VI {{E}} district with the elections complementary of April 16th, 1871; he sits at the commission of Teaching and vote against the creation of the Comité of public Hello, he signs proclamation of the minority. The Commune decides on April 13rd to cut down and not to unbolt the Vendôme Column. Billhook then proposes, since it had in first the idea to remove this column, to pay the expenses of its repair. After the bloody Semaine it is stopped on June 7th, 1871, and the 3rd council of war condemns it to six months of prison - that it will purge in Paris, Versailles and Neuilly - and with 500 francs of fine.

But in May 1873, the new president of the Republic, the marshal of Mac-Mahon, decides to make rebuild the Vendôme Column at the expenses of Billhook (either more than 323.000 francs according to the established estimate). It is driven back with the ruin after the fall of the Commune, its goods put under sequestration, its confiscated fabrics. It is exiled in Suisse, with Turn-with-Peilz, close to Vevey. Billhook obtains to pay nearly 10.000 francs per annum during 33 years.

The exile in Switzerland (1873-1877)

After a few past weeks in the Jura (Locle, La Chaux-de-Fonds), to Neuchâtel, Geneva and in the Valais, Courbet realizes that it is on Riviera lemanic, thanks to the many foreigners who remain there, that it will have the most chance to tie contacts and to find possible outlets for its painting. It briefly places with Veytaux (Castle of Chillon), Clarens and Montreux, then throws its reserved on the small village of Turn-with-Peilz (at the edge of the Lac Léman) and moves into a house at the edge of the lake of the name of Good-Port. It will be the home port of the last years of its life. From there, it circulates much and the reports/ratios that spies (infiltrated until among the colony of proscribed Commune of Paris) send to the French police force inform us about its many contacts and its innumerable displacements (Geneva, Freiburg, the Gruyere, Interlaken, Lucerne, Martigny, Loèche-the-Baths, La Chaux-de-Fonds, etc).

Billhook is neither sick, neither alcoholic, nor unproductive during the first years of its exile. He writes with his sister in 1876:

My dear Juliette, I go perfectly well, never of my life I did not go thus, although the newspapers reactionaries say that I am assisted of five doctors, that I am hydropic, that I return to the religion, that I make my will, etc All that are last vestiges of the napoleonism, it is the clerical Barber and newspapers.

He paints, carves, exposes and sells his works; he organizes his defense vis-a-vis the attacks of the government of the " Order moral" and wants to obtain justice from the French deputies; it takes part in many demonstrations (festivals of gymnastics, shooting and song); it is accommodated in many confederated democratic circles and the meetings of proscribed. As in the past, it organizes its own publicity and maintains the social reports/ratios as well in the coffees as with the representatives of the establishment of the country which accommodates it.

It receives encouragements from abroad: in 1873, invited by the association of the Austrian artists, it exposes 34 paintings to Vienna in margin of the World Fair; the painter James Whistler contacts it to expose works to London; with the the United States, it has its customers and it exposes regularly to Boston since 1866. Several painters of the country frequently visit him with the Tower and paint at its sides (Auguste Baud-Bovy, François Furet, François Bocion) or present their tables in the same exposures (Ferdinand Hodler). Merchants as the engineer exiled Paul Pia in Geneva regularly propose with the sale works of the inhabitant of Franche-Comté painter. The request for tables was so important since 1872 that Courbet could not follow and had secured collaboration d'" aides" who prepared its landscapes. Billhook did not make any mystery of this mode of production. It is known, moreover, that Courbet did not hesitate to sign time with other a table painted by one or the other of his/her collaborators.

He works simultaneously for Mrs Arnaud of Ariège in his castle of Crètes with Clarens and gives tables for tombolas of disaster victims and exiled; he thinks of a project of flag for the trade union of the typographers in Geneva and carries out the portrait of a lawyer lausannois, the radical deputy Louis Ruchonnet (future Federal adviser); he converses with Henri Rochefort and Mrs Charles Hugo with Turn-of-Peilz and, a few days afterwards, he plays the part of carry-flag of a local company at the time of a festival of gymnastics with Zurich. Its work does not escape either this continual to and from between a commonplace close to the kitsch and a poetic realism. This unequal production is not limited to the period of exile, but it is accentuated since the threat which weighs on the painter to have to pay the exorbitant expenses of rebuilding of the Column, involving it to produce more and more. That encouraged many forgers to benefit from the situation and, already of living of the artist, the market of art was invaded the works allotted to Courbet of which it is difficult to appreciate the originality.

The circumstances (war and exile), the lawsuits, the narrowness of the cultural center of the country which accommodates the painter, the distance of Paris are as many factors which hardly encourage it to carry out works of the importance of those of the years 1850. In this unfavourable context, Billhook with the force to paint portraits of great quality (Governed Billhook father of the artist, Small-Palate, Paris), landscapes largely painted ( Léman with laying down sun Museum Jenisch in Vevey and Museum of the Art schools with Saint-Gall), some Castle of Chillon (like that of the Gustave Courbet Museum to Ornans). There is attacked in 1877, in preparation for the World Fair of the following year, with a Great panorama of the Alps (The Cleveland Museum off Art) remained partially unfinished. It also approaches the sculpture, the two achievements of these years of exile are, the Dame with the gull and Helvétia .

By solidarity with its exiled compatriots of the Common of Paris, Courbet always refused to turn over to France before a general amnesty. Its will was respected and its body was buried with Turn-of-Peilz in the first days of 1878. In the Alarm clock of January 6th, Jules Vallès pays homage to the painter and “the man of peace”:

It had the life more beautiful than those which feel, as of youth and until death, the odor of the ministries, mildewed of the orders. It crossed the large currents, it plunged in the ocean of crowd, it intended to beat like blows of gun the heart of people, and it finished in full nature, in the middle of the trees, by breathing the perfumes which had enivrés its youth, under a sky that the vapor of the great massacres did not tarnish, but, which, this evening perhaps, set ablaze by the setting sun, will extend on the house from death, like a large red flag .

The man

Of a profile Assyrian and Hungarian, drinking extremely, speaking thickly, orating, conceited, hablor, of a posted liveliness, which excesses maintain the scandalous chronicle with which Baudelaire is afflicted, but his correspondence reveals more subtle features and its painting reflects such a rough nature by no means. In addition, very attached to its native soil, Gustave Courbet will paint several works such as a burial with Ornans , or the Oak of Flagey , (also called: “The Oak of Gwenole”) Flagey being a village close to Ornans and in which the Courbet family is originating.

It was invited by Eugene Poittevin in his house of Étretat in 1869.

The painter

Gustave Courbet coated her fabric of a dark bottom, almost black, from which it went up towards clearness. Proudhon, the socialist theorist (and the man whom he admired more) would have liked to make of him a proletarian painter but except the stone breakers, not of workmen on its fabrics and few peasants.

Its works

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