GU STA V E C OU R B ET Wi th a Bi ograp hi cal a n d C r iti cal Stu dy b y L E O N C E B E N E D I TE C u r a t or o f t h e L u x e mb ou r g P r fessor a h Gallery , o t t e ° Ecole du L ouvr e , 89 Notes L A R A N an d by J . P H G A S TO N DR EYFUS ,Wi th Forty -eight P lates D E P I T PH ILA L H A : J . B . LIPPINCO T COM PANY D WI I LON ON . LL AM H EINEMANN 1913 CO N TE N T S . Léonce Gustave Courbet . Introduction by Benedite Short Bibliography LIS T OF I LLUS TR ATIO Courbet au Chien Noir Frontispiece Le Guitarrero To face page 4 Le Hamac ’ L Homrne ala Pipe ’ L Hom e 51 la Ceinture de Cuir ’ L Aprés- Diner a Ornans Les Paysans de Flagey ’ L Ap6tre Jean Journet Les Casseurs de Pierres L ’ Enterrement a Ornans L ’ Enterrement ( The Bearers) ’ L En terremen t ( The Women) Les Demoiselles de Village ’ Environs d Orn an s Les Baigneuses Les Lutteurs La Fileuse Endormie Baudelaire Champfleury Proudhon et s a Famille Alfred Bruyas La Rencontre Les Cribleuses de Blé Le Chateau d ’ ornans ’ 25 . L Atelier ’ L A li r 2 6 . te e ( Fragment) 2 7 . Courbet au Col Rayé 2 8 . Baigneuse ( Study) 2 Mm 9 . e Marie Crocq 3 0 . Les Demoiselles au Bord de la 1 3 . Chiens et Lievre 3 2 . Chasseurs en Forét 33 . Le Combat de Cerfs d’ E 3 4 . Le Chasseur au Con 3 5 . Le Retour de la ference 3 6 . Vénus et Psyché u 3 7 . La Femme a Perroquet ’ 8 . 6 d I rlan d 3 J , Femme e 39 . La Sieste 40 . La Vague aux trois Barques ’ d E r 4 1 . La Falaise t etat 42 . La Vague Vallés 43 . Jules et 44 . Faisans Pommes 45 . La Femme de Munich ’ au l Eau 46 . Maisons Bord de a 47 . Les Grands Ch taigniers a 48 . Le Ch teau de Chillon G U S TAVE CO URB E T ( 1 8 1 9- 1 877) N the world of art there has never been a personality so clamorously imposed upon the minds of its contemporaries as that of Courbet . He was anathema to his generation and he forced himself upon its _ of judgment with all the weight his loud voice , self importance and his intolerable and overweening vanity . If we are to understand his career we must fi n d an explanation for this feeling and some excuse for it . He exasperated the public and exhausted the patience of his best friends . So much did he irritate public and critics that in the unhappy closing years of his life he paid dearly for the misunderstanding that lay between them . He was a harmless braggart but he was in the end regarded as a dangerous man . He was taken at his word , and after 1 8 0 of 7 , when , in the midst harassing political events , he threw in his lot with the revolutionaries and shouted and o roared louder than any of them , he was s compromised that he could find none to defend him save a few of his more enlightened colleagues who had understood him , and had a great admiration for him as a painter . He was \ cruelly treated and the end of his life w as s ad and em bittered . But , severe though his judges were , there is some excuse for them , such a strain had he placed on their patience . He had an enormous and rather gross appetite for fame , a P n a ru le ue a t g e sq thirst for glory . At all costs he must have people talking about him ; he was perpetually outdoing f himself in his e forts to astonish , always on the look out for a fresh opportunity of shocking the public into atten tion , when , weary and exhausted , it turned its eyes away VI ]. from him . He w as the hub of the universe ; he said so and did genuinely believe it , so completely was he intoxicated by his own boasting . The biographies are full of fantastic and perfectly authentic stories of his childish and colossal vanity . The portrait which Theophile Silvestre drew of of him , with , indeed , a great deal kindliness , gives us many such typical anecdotes . Certainly not even Napoleon was more concerned with history . There was not a single action in his life that w as not a sort of demonstration designed to stir the world . On the day when he decided “ of to refuse the cross of the Legion Honour , and , as he out c fe came of a a with Fantin and some other friends , dropped into the post his famous letter to the Ministry , he turned to his companions and bade them mark well what he was doing since it would make the day memorable of in the history the world . But his letters are above all things the least capable of deception . To gain any idea of the tastelessness , the utter folly of his monstrous boasts , it is necessary to turn to the copious and solid monument that Georges Riat has raised to his memory and to read the correspondence of this mufle terrible , spoiled , chattering , bragging (if the ni d en tte . slang may be p ) child He wrote , for exam ple , to ” Bru yas , his faithful financial backer when he built his wooden shed by the Alma bridge : I have built a cathedral . i s The whole world stands amazed . My triumph o as n t only over the moderns but over the ancients well . - e It is a very Louvre . There is no Champs Elys es , no more Luxembourg , no more Champ de Mars . I have staggered and dismayed the whole art world With his companions he is even more childishly swagger ing . He tots up the list of noble persons flocking round viii r e him . The Count Choiseul and his sister , the Ma quis de Montalembert , have just left my house . Father Hyacinthe mentioned my name in his lecture at Notre Dame My success in Paris just at present i s i n credible . I shall soon be the only artist left . Courbet was really much better than the absurd attitude d ff he adopte . Later generations which do not have to su er from it can laugh at his buffoonery and forget the man as in his work , as it is in duty bound to do , for his work is admirable as the man was odious and tiresome . It is , o however , useless t dissociate them , it is essential not to b rk forget the man if his w is to be rightly understood . Indeed the native qualities of his whole- heartedly and fundamentally nai ve character are not hidden by his rw acquired attributes , for all his ove eening vanity and his gross Franche Comté peasant cunning ; hi s character was not blunted by culture and the whole man is in his i work, with all his excesses , his vagaries , his violence , h s of hi s lack taste , hunger for publicity , and also with all hi hi s physical beauty , s abounding health , his mountainy vigour , and sometimes a certain strange natural grace and charm . Perhaps even it may be said that some of his most detestable fai lings , which often proved stronger of than his inspiration , reveal to us the secret his most ' mag nificent audacities , and his most admirably successful daring experiments . As is well known , Courbet was in the habit of giving own his definition of his art , and did so notably in his preface to the catalogue of his exhibition in the Avenue i “ ” 1 8 . w as Monta gne in 5 5 He a realist . More than " “ ” that He was Realism , the proud title which he gave to his exhibition . of He explains the nature his realism in the manifesto , drawn up perhaps by the cunning pen of one of his - Cham fieur accredited censer bearers , p y, for instance , which is so amazing in its calm deduction and its style which so has little in common with his usual florid eloquence . I have studied , with a complete disregard for any system , of the art the ancients and the art of the moderns . I have neither tried to imitate the first nor to copy the latter ; nor ‘ ' of ’ have I come to the blind alley Art for Art s Sake . No "I have tried only in a full knowledge of tradition to discover a reasoned and independent consciousness h of my own individuality . My only aim as been to find o p wer in knowledge . It has been my aim to transcribe the ow n manners , ideas , aspect of my generation , as fully and as closely as I can , to be not only a painter but also ” a man , in a word , my aim is to create a living art . Not even Thorecould have done better than that . as " Was this programme , a programme , so very original It had all been said over and over again long before Courbet . of 1 We have only to turn to the preface to the Salon 83 3 , written by Laviron , in the very heat of the most triumphant of period romanticism , to find that these ideas were in the air and in the minds of those who fought the deficiencies and failings of romanticism , j ust as they fought those of classicism .