Annotated Mona Lisa, The - Strickland, Carol [64]
Bonheur, “The Horse Fair,” 1853-55, MMA, NY.
FRENCH REALISM
COURBET. The father of the Realist movement was Gustave Courbet (pronounced Koor BAY; 1819-77). A man of great pragmatism, he defied the conventional taste for history paintings and poetic subjects, insisting that “painting is essentially a concrete art and must be applied to real and existing things.” When asked to paint angels, he replied, “I have never seen angels. Show me an angel and I will paint one.”
His credo was “everything that does not appear on the retina is outside the domain of painting,” As a result, Courbet limited himself to subjects close to home, like “Burial at Ornans” a 22-foot-long canvas portraying a provincial funeral in bleak earth tones. Never before had a scene of plain folk been painted in the epic size reserved for grandiose history paintings. Critics howled that it was hopelessly vulgar.
When an art jury refused to exhibit what Courbet considered his most important work, “Interior of My Studio,” the painter built his own exhibition hall (actually a shed) called the “Pavilion of Realism” — the first one-man show ever. There was nothing restrained about Courbet. He loudly defended the working class and was jailed for six months for tearing down a Napoleonic monument. He detested the theatricality of Academic art; his drab figures at everyday tasks expressed what Baudelaire termed the “heroism of modern life.”
Courbet, “Interior of My Studio, a Real Allegory Summing Up Seven Years of My Life as an Artist,” 1854-55, Musée d’Orsay, Paris. Courbet portrays the two spheres of influence that affected his art. At left are the ordinary people that are his subjects, and at right, representatives of the Paris art world. The focal point is a self-portrait of the artist. His pivotal position between the two worlds implied that the artist was something of a go-between, linking the real world to the art world.
THE BARBIZON SCHOOL: REALISTIC FRENCH COUNTRYSIDES. Influenced by Constable, who painted actual scenes rather than imagined ones, a group of landscape painters known as the Barbizon School brought the same freshness to French art. Beginning in the 1830s, they painted outdoors near the town of Barbizon. The most famous names associated with this school were Millet and Corot.
COROT: MISTY TREES. Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (pronounced Kore ROH; 1796-1875) was taught “to reproduce as scrupulously as possible what I saw in front of me.” He brought a natural, objective style to landscape painting, capturing the quality of a particular place at a particular moment. Corot used a limited palette of pearly, silvery tones
Corot, “Ville d’Avray,” 1870, MMA, NY. Barbizon painters like Corot painted directly from nature.
with olive green, and soft, wispy strokes. The nearly monochromatic landscapes of his later years were so popular they have become some of the most widely forged paintings in the world, giving rise to the comment, “Corot painted 3,000 paintings, of which 6,000 are in America.”
Peasant Portraits. Jean-françois Millet (pronounced Mee LAY; 1814-75) is forever linked to portrayals of rural laborers plowing, sowing seed, and harvesting. Born to a peasant family, he once said he desired “to make the trivial serve to express the sublime. ” Before, peasants were invariably portrayed as doltish. Millet gave them a sturdy dignity.
Millet, “The Sower,” c.1850, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
AMERICAN REALISM
HOMER. “He is a genuine painter,” novelist Henry James said of Winslow Homer (1836-1910). “To see, and to reproduce what he sees, is his only care.” A self-taught artist, Homer steered clear of outside influence and theory, basing his work on direct observation of nature. “When I have selected the thing carefully,” he said of his method, “I paint it exactly as it appears.” His skill made him the major American marine painter and watercolorist of all time.
First apprenticed to a lithographer, Homer became a successful illustrator