Читать книгу Gustave Courbet - Georges Riat - Страница 5

One of Murger’s characters in Scènes de la vie de Bohème (Scenes of Bohemian Life) was Schaunard, whose real name was Alexandre Schanne. He was a painter at odds with the authorities, ended up selling toys in the Marais district of Paris and sketched an entertaining description in his Souvenirs of life in the realist crowd, around 1849. Every evening Schanne went to an open studio where one could paint and sculpt from live models for six francs a month. Years later, Schanne could still remember how astonished he and his colleagues, among them Bonvin, were at the way Courbet worked:

“He painted on thick, grey paper, sized with oil and stretched on frames three times the usual size. He was therefore obliged to stay in the back row, so as not to block the view of the others. The box he used was also oversized; it held huge bladders filled with the most ordinary colours, which are sold by the kilogram, such as white, yellow ochre, vermillion, and black… Here is how he mixed his colours, after he carefully studied his model; he prepared basics for light, half-tones, and shadow. Then he arranged the primary colours in a fan on the top of his palette. Having done that, he painted with a stiff brush, a knife, a rag, even his thumb. He used anything and everything. But he was more interested in the harmony than the richness of the colours, a quality, in fact, which stayed with him until the end of his career. Never, at Père Lapin’s place, did we see him do a whole figure; he studied only parts.”

Schanne was one of the regulars at Courbet’s studio, of which he has left a quick sketch. The room was large, lit from above and by a small window which looked out on the rue de l’École de Médecine.

One of Courbet’s obsessions was music. He claimed that he was an expert and sometimes tried to give lessons to his friend Promayet, the son of the organist in Ornans, and who was a violinist in the orchestra of the Hippodrome. Bonvin, who was sometimes present at these recitals, used to say that as soon as anyone mentioned music, Courbet’s antelope-like eye lit up. Like Ingres, who liked to pass himself off as an expert violinist, the artist sometimes painted himself as a guitar or cello player. Nor was his studio the only place where he liked to sing his songs; the walls of the Andler beer hall trembled with them every evening and well into the night.

Courbet did a fine portrait of Madame Andler (Mère Grégoire), a large Swiss woman, behind her bar, between a pot of flowers and the waiters’ tip box. At the time the bar was at the height of its popularity. Champfleury observed that the number of Parisians flocking to this “temple of Realism” was considerable. There were famous painters, he said, who wanted to see this “bull in a china shop” first hand; critics, “divining rod in hand to gauge the depth of the doctrine”; cynics looking for something to believe in, if only briefly; opportunists looking for a way to benefit from the new school; newcomers to the artistic and literary milieu; idlers and curiosity seekers and also a good many merrymakers all mixed together. Some were just passing through, such as Corot, Decamps, Daumier, Barye and Préault. Regulars were the critic Théophile Sylvestre, whose admiration for the master of Ornans was not without a touch of perfidiousness; Bonvin, Courbet’s first friend, and guide, in Paris; Alfred Bruyas, from Montpellier, who gave Courbet such valuable encouragement; the painter from Besançon, Jean Gigoux, and the two Realism enthusiasts from Saintonge, Etienne Baudry and Castagnary. Baudelaire should be considered somewhat differently; his relationship with Courbet was the subject of some surprise, yet they saw each other on a regular basis for a number of years, since the poet lived with the painter in his times of extreme need. He even asked Courbet one night to take notes on his dreams – Courbet was horrified.

14. Woman Sleeping by a Stream, 1844.

Oil on canvas, 88 × 68.5 cm.

Collection Oskar Reinhart “Am Römerholz”, Winterthur.

15. The Source, 1868.

Oil on canvas, 128 × 97 cm.

Musée d’Orsay, Paris.

16. The Bacchante, c. 1844–1847.

Oil on canvas, 65 × 81 cm.

Fondation Rau, Cologne.

Although the influence of all these persons was not enormous, the same cannot be said for the authority exerted on Courbet by Champfleury and Proudhon.

It is easy to imagine how pleased the writer was to ally himself with Courbet, whom he immediately recognised as having the stature necessary to introduce the realist doctrine into art. Although Realism in art had an eventful history, it never amounted to a unified whole; its proponents themselves never agreed on its definition, nor the direction it should take. Nevertheless, its first collective manifestation occurred at the Salon of 1855. Champfleury claimed in his 1877 biographical note on Max Buchon that “Realism was a democratic, spontaneous and unthinking aspiration in certain minds; for, around 1848, we were buffeted by a special wind that pushed us into action without apparent reason.” The definition is vague, as we see, and it would be useless to look for a more precise one in another book by the same author, nevertheless entitled Realism. If it is vague, however, it is because the realist movement itself had no precise beginnings either.

Fundamentally, what all these young rebels wanted and put forth haphazardly in their speeches at the Andler brasserie, was a reaction against the double current, which seemed to them to be pulling French art into decadence, with the Academicism of Ingres on the one hand, and the Romanticism of Delacroix on the other. Neither corresponded in the least to their positivist leanings; the first with its taste for allegory and antiquity, its abhorrence of the ugly and the trivial, which led to its not depicting real life, and its idealistic intentions, admitted or implied; the second with its wilful refutation of the present time and its exclusive quest for colour, the picturesque, historical drama and exoticism. Eager for glory of their own, the newcomers raised the flag of Realism against these two enemies, believing that they themselves had invented the movement.

Does this mean that the realists didn’t follow in the footsteps of their predecessors? To claim that, it would be necessary to deny the constant evolution of humanity and things, in which nothing is ever created without a cause linked closely to the past. Without dwelling on the Flemish, Spanish, even Italian, and French realists of the fifteenth, sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, who would be too numerous to list, and who are also linked to their elders, one can trace the path of this tradition back to the beginning of the nineteenth century and the height of the school of David. A foreshadowing of Realism then was the fascination with contemporary life, which moved David to paint The Coronation of Napoleon, or The Oath of the Army after the Awarding of Medals, and Gros his Bonaparte at Arcole and Napoleon in the Plague House at Jaffa. But the most significant event was the The Raft of the “Medusa” by Géricault at the Salon of 1819, about which Proudhon said, “a single painting like the Naufrage de la Méduse… suffices to point the way for art across the generations, and makes the wait worthwhile.”

Géricault, who died prematurely in 1824 at the age of thirty-three, was in fact claimed erroneously by the Romantics. If he had lived, he would have founded Realism, which was present in the embryonic state in his work. It is well known that he was fascinated with reality. At the Louvre, his preferences went to the realist masters such as Caravaggio and Salvator Rosa, whom he copied ardently, and from whom he borrowed those dark backgrounds that have been called “Bolognese cooking.” Courbet moreover always claimed him as one of his masters. The many paintings of the hunt and of races and the “portraits” of horses made by Courbet show just how much he learned from this teacher, and to what extent their tastes were similar.

17. Woman in White Stockings, c. 1861.

Oil on canvas, 65 × 81 cm.

The Barnes Foundation, Merion.

18. Portrait of Juliette Courbet, 1844.

Oil on canvas, 77.5 × 62 cm.

Petit Palais – Musée des beaux-arts de la ville de Paris, Paris.

Finally, it should not be forgotten that the landscape artists of the school of 1830, even Corot, began almost unanimously to turn in the direction of Realism. Just when Courbet was starting his ascension, however, their early successes were waning. It took a good deal of pressure when the attempt was made to enlist these painters among the Romantics. During this time which led up to the Revolution of 1848, they were still under the realist influence of the English and Dutch landscape artists, however the time was not far off when they would evolve towards subjectivism, which was a form of Romanticism.

In spite of his yearly trips back to Franche-Comté, his regular patronage of the Andler-Keller, and, occasionally, the café Momus, could have been harmful to Courbet. Fortunately, once spring arrived, the jolly band took up the habit of going out to the country now and then for recreation, and so he was able to get back in touch with nature. They went to the Marnes woods, where, as Delvau phrased it, “the hazel trees and the fricassees of la Mère Pihan are in flower”, or to the Fleury woods, “where the coral bells and the cutlets of le Père Bazin are growing” and to the Plessis-Piquet pond “full of reeds and where Père Cense’s ducks swim around.” The cabaret run by Père Cense was their favourite.

In the year of 1849, Courbet went several times to Louveciennes, near the former residence of Madame Du Barry. This was a charming village on the edge of the forest of Marly, not far from Vaucresson, Garches, la Celle-Saint-Cloud, and l’Etang-la-Ville, which had exquisite paths shaded by centuries-old oaks and beech trees to tempt the rambler. There he would call upon another of his compatriots in his quiet abode, Francis Wey, who had been born in Besançon in 1812.

They had met in the winter of 1848, as Wey himself tells it in his Mémoires inédits; “One afternoon, near the foot of the rue de Seine, I met Monsieur Champfleury, and, as we were gabbing on the pavement, he mentioned a young, enormously talented painter, as yet entirely unknown, and who, being a native of my Franche-Comté, would be worthy of a visit.” They decided to do so at once and went to the rue Mazarine, crossed the Place de l’École de Médecine, and went up to the studio. There they saw coming towards them, “a tall young man with beautiful eyes, but very thin, pale, sallow, bony, lanky […]. He nodded at me, without saying a word,” wrote Francis Wey, “then went back to his stool in front of a canvas which I saw as I came up behind him. I don’t remember ever having been so dazzled. The painting before me, treated with a rustic nonchalance, like the subject, showed a masterful insouciance, a controlled fire; the dark tones of the painting, the poetry of the execution were like no known style.” Full of enthusiasm, Wey exclaimed, “With such a rare and marvellous gift, how is it that you are not already famous? No one has ever painted like that!”

“Pardié,” replied the artist with a very countrified Franche-Comté accent, “I paint like God!”

19. Man with a Leather Belt, Portrait of the Artist, 1845–1846.

Oil on canvas, 100 × 82 cm.

Musée d’Orsay, Paris.

20. Portrait of Alfred Bruyas, known as Painting Solution, 1853.

Oil on canvas, 92 × 74 cm.

Musée Fabre, Montpellier.

Francis Wey couldn’t help being taken aback by this placid statement, and the rest of the conversation simply increased his astonishment. Courbet struck him as, “quite odd, as if rebelling… against most every theory, and steeped in a wilful ignorance, calculated to create an effect.” He railed against the masters, against pupils who subjected themselves before them like slaves, and declared that it was high time to change all that. But the writer did not criticise him for these opinions so unlike his own, because of the “evidence of his extraordinary worth” spread before him, among which were Man with a Pipe and the future success at the Salon of 1849, as well as After Dinner at Ornans, which had caught his eye as soon as he entered.

That Salon of 1849 was highly important in the history of art since the exhibiting artists were allowed to elect the jury themselves. The experiment was enormously successful, if one judges by the results; Courbet was awarded the second-place medal. He had submitted seven works, including landscapes, portraits, and a genre scene, all of which were accepted.

The great success went to the After Dinner at Ornans. The scene takes place in the Courbet kitchen, near the immense fireplace, on a dark afternoon, when all the objects are bathed in chiaroscuro. The meal has just finished and the table is still covered with the remains. The musician Promayet is standing, playing the violin; Courbet is listening absently; his father, with a glass in his hand, is asleep, and Adolphe Marlet carefully takes an ember from the fireplace to light his pipe. The overall impression is rustic, calm, serene, restful; the heads are all excellent portraits and everything, even down to the big bulldog asleep under a chair, shows how Courbet was able to render his observations with fluidity and truth. The After Dinner at Ornans is one of the great masterpieces of the nineteenth century.

Courbet was much talked about in the newspapers and magazines. In the Revue des Deux Mondes, F. de Lagenevais criticised him for having painted a genre scene on a five-foot canvas. In his view, using life-size proportions was wrong; one should look at life through the small end of the glass, and furthermore, make it poetic. As for Champfleury, he sounded an epic note; “Courbet has taken the Salon by storm with nine paintings. Yesterday, no one knew his name; today it on everyone’s lips. Such a sudden success has not been seen in ages.” Concerning the After Dinner at Ornans, “this painting could be boldly hung in the Flemish museums, amid the great crowds of burgomasters by Van der Helst, and it would hold its own… Courbet, before long, will be one of our greatest artists.”

It was claimed that this work had been painted with litharge on the background, which was fading away. It should be recognised that the subject called for this penumbra, since the scene is set in the late afternoon, perhaps at twilight, after the hunt. In a letter to Francis Wey of 28 November 1849, Courbet even referred to this painting as the Soiree à Ornans (Evening at Ornans). It is undeniable that it looked dark; but this is true of all the paintings of this period, in particular those by Courbet, who at that time was fully into his période noire. As he explained to Francis Wey, at the Salon of 1849 itself:

“That’s the way I see; you can’t reproduce an artificial colour which is not real to you; that would be the false art of Ingres and the others. If brighter light is necessary, I will think about it, and when I see it, it will be done, without my deciding to do so.”

Thus did he justify, once again, the description that he gave of himself, as “the pupil of nature and feeling,” and which his next works would bear out even further.

21. Portrait of H. J. Van Wisselingh, 1846.

Oil on panel, 57.2 × 46 cm.

Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth.