Musée d'Orsay, un enterrement à Ornans THE BURIAL AT ORNANS
THE BURIAL AT ORNANS – GUSTAVE COURBET
This painting is very important in art history and I will try to explain it to you.
A few words about the painter
Gustave Courbet was born in 1819 in a village located in the east of France called Ornans. When he was twenty he arrived in Paris to be a painter. He begins with a romantic period but the revolution in 1848 will change totally his style of painting. He was interested in the new socialist ideas and wanted to break with the academic approach. There was the scandal of the burial at Ornans, there was the refusal of his paintings for the universal exposition in 1855, Courbet built “a pavilion of realism” to show his paintings. However, you must know that Courbet was a very successful artist in France and abroad, he was not a cursed painter. At the end of his life he was involved in the destruction of the Vendome column, and had to pay a lot of money. He was exiled to Switzerland and paid the expenses of the restoration of the column until his death which occurred in 1877.
The painting
It was presented at the Salon in 1850. And it was a scandal. Why this painting provoked a scandal and what is new?
Firstly, the dimensions of the canvas. Usually these are reserved for historical paintings, but Courbet uses them to present an ordinary subject, a popular event. This painting is 7 meter long.
Second innovation: he wanted to show reality that will lead to a new artistic movement called Realism. He wanted to show the peasants, the workers, the bourgeois in their daily life with no trace of idealisation. And that was really shocking. “As he showed reality, he expressed ugliness”, to quote the critics of the time. He was nicknamed “the painter of the ugly”
So the painting describes a burial at Ornans, his birthplace. The real name is Painting of Human Figures, the History of a Burial at Ornans. Courbet took his inspiration from group portraits of the Dutch civic guards in the 17th century. The painting shows 46 people. The personages are people that Courbet knew well because they were people living in his village. His grand-father, his sisters, his friends such as Proudhon are represented. All the social classes are depicted: the clergy, with the priest and the altar boys, the bourgeois dressed in black, the reminder of the French Revolution with two men wearing garments dating back to that time, and the women crying. Gathering all these people together was the idea of “universal understanding” which prevailed as a constant preoccupation in the 19th century and most of all for those who had believed in the 1848 revolution.
The frieze-like composition is dominated by Christ on the cross. The nuances of colour in the dark greens and dull greys produce an austere tone but you must remember that the colour went darker with the time. The technique is pretty classical
The signification of the painting
A lot was said about the signification: does this burial represent the death of God, the death of idealism, the death of the Republic? It seems today that the interpretation is much more complex than it seemed previously, but Courbet did not leave any explanation. We must only remember that Courbet wanted, as he said, “to put art at the service of man”. He wanted to illustrate the reality of mankind. As he said “I cannot paint an angel because I have never seen one”.