Press Release
Gustave Courbet
7 September 2014 – 18 January 2015
The Fondation Beyeler devotes many of its exhibitions to artists whose oeuvre had a determining
influence on the development of modern painting. One such key figure in art history is Gustave
Courbet, who was born in Ornans near Besançon in the French Jura in 1819 and who died in La Tourde-Peilz in Switzerland in 1877.
It is 16 years since Courbet’s work was last presented in Switzerland. The exhibition at the Fondation
Beyeler, which will include 50 to 60 works, will concentrate on his role as the first avant-garde painter.
With his provocative canvases and his emphasis on his individuality as an artist, Courbet developed into
a precursor of Modernism who broke with the conventions of traditional academic training.
Featuring self-portraits, representations of women and pictures of grottos and seascapes, the exhibition
will highlight Courbet’s innovative use of colour and his strategy of ambiguity. Other themes of the
show will be the break with academic tradition and the development of Realism in art, Courbet’s
revolutionary impasto painting technique, which expressed his individuality as an artist, and his playful
treatment of traditional motifs and symbols.
Courbet’s famous painting L’Origine du monde will be at the heart of the exhibition. This will be its first
public presentation in the German-speaking part of Europe. Dating from 1866, the painting is the
unknown masterpiece of the 19th century, a work which few saw at the time but which everyone talked
about and which retains its provocativeness even today.
Depicting the springs, caves, steep limestone cliffs and thick forests found in the Jura around Ornans
where he was born, Courbet’s landscapes are often combined with representations of the female nude.
Human beings, sexuality and untouched nature are united in a fascinating equilibrium. Other canvases
centre on the impenetrable darkness of his Jurassian mountain caves, showing him to have been a
master of suggestion, a true painter of the invisible. Courbet was an artist who established new pictorial
ideas.
The room entitled “Tracks in the Snow”, where Courbet’s snowscapes will be displayed, will show
visitors how Courbet, through his painting, transformed colour into an object. Pastose and expressive,
yet of a dynamic lightness, the colour white becomes snow in those works, seeming to create its own
reality.
The exhibition is a joint project with the Musée d’Art et d’Histoire in Geneva, which will present
Courbet’s oeuvre during his exile in Switzerland. Together, the exhibitions in Riehen/Basel and Geneva
will form a “Saison Courbet” – a “Courbet season” – beginning in the autumn of 2014.
Catalogue
The Fondation Beyeler is publishing a catalogue in English and German to accompany the exhibition.
The bookshop edition is being published by Hatje Cantz Verlag, Ostfildern. The lavishly illustrated
catalogue contains essays by Ulf Küster, Stéphane Guégan, Michel Hilaire, Laurence Madeline, Bruno
Mottin and James Rubin. 200 pages, 131 illustrations, price: 62.50 CHF (ISBN 978-3-906053-18-9,
English edition: ISBN 978-3-906053-19-6). It can also be purchased online from the Fondation
Beyeler’s shop at the following address: shop.fondationbeyeler.ch
Fondation Beyeler thanks: Artephila Stiftung, Ernst Göhner Stiftung and Walter Haefner Stiftung for
their generous support and contributions which made the exhibition possible.
Press images: are available for download at http://pressimages.fondationbeyeler.ch
Further information:
Elena DelCarlo, M.A.
Head of PR / Media Relations
Tel. + 41 (0)61 645 97 21, presse@fondationbeyeler.ch, www.fondationbeyeler.ch
Fondation Beyeler, Beyeler Museum AG, Baselstrasse 77, CH-4125 Riehen, Switzerland
Fondation Beyeler opening hours: 10 am - 6 pm daily, Wednesdays until 8 pm
Press Release
Gustave Courbet
7 September 2014 – 18 January 2015
Gustave Courbet’s independence of formal conventions, his self-confident demeanor, the emphasis he
placed upon his individuality as an artist, his inclination towards provocation and breaking taboos, not
to mention his revolutionary painting technique, were to set standards that have influenced generations
of artists. He is one of the most important forerunners of Classic Modernism.
Starting on 7 September 2014, the Fondation Beyeler is devoting an extensive exhibition to the French
artist, the first in Switzerland for over fifteen years. The exhibition presents pioneering works from all
phases of the artist’s career, including a number of paintings which have rarely been seen in public or
which were not publicly accessible for many decades.
The exhibition opens with the early, complex self-portraits through which Courbet made a name for
himself in the early years of his career in Paris. Those works are followed by numerous landscapes of
the area where he grew up: paintings of remote streams and springs, of rocks and grottoes. Courbet’s
representations of waves and his seascapes (which he called paysages marins) directly capture nature’s
beauty and dynamism. Yet above all, like his famous winter landscapes and snowscapes, they
demonstrate his innovative, virtuoso use of paint. Here, the artist’s raw material becomes the object of
his art.
At the heart of the exhibition are Courbet’s mysterious female nudes beside water and his famous
taboo-breaking work L’Origine du Monde/The Origin of the World, the profound impact of which
continues to be felt in art right up to the present day. This is the first time that Courbet’s iconic work
will be exhibited in a museum in the German-speaking part of Europe.
The exhibition has been curated by Ulf Küster, curator at the Fondation Beyeler, and is part of the
“Courbet Season”, a joint venture with the Musées d’art et d’histoire in Geneva, which is mounting a
concurrent show in the Musée Rath that focuses on the last years of Courbet’s life, which he spent in
exile in Switzerland.
*
Gustave Courbet was born on 10 June 1819 in Ornans in the French Jura and died on 31 December
1877 in La-Tour-de-Peilz on Lake Geneva. Courbet’s father Régis Courbet was a well-to-do landowner
and his mother Sylvie came from an old, well-established family. Gustave had four younger sisters:
Clarisse, who died shortly before her thirteenth birthday, Zoé, Zélie and Juliette. There is some
uncertainty about where Courbet was born because official records make no note of an exact birthplace.
The story told in Courbet’s family was that his mother had given birth to him under a tree by the side of
the road, having been unable to complete the journey in time from Flagey, where her husband had a
farm and considerable landholdings, to Ornans.
As someone from the provinces, Courbet initially found it difficult to establish himself as a painter in
Paris. He tried to take part in the Salon from 1841 onwards. After several failed attempts, he made his
début at the Salon of 1844 with his self-portrait Courbet au chien noir.
Self-Portraits
Courbet painted nearly all his self-portraits in the period 1840–55. These were the years during
which Courbet became Courbet, as it were, and the self-portraits played a decisive role in this
process. The most convenient way of honing his skills was to use himself as a motif. He thus
developed the expressive potential of his art in a dialogue with his own image.The various poses
and roles he assumed should be seen as self-imposed tasks, and one can understand why he kept many
of these pictures for himself, holding on to them for the rest of his life as documents of his artistic
journey.
The most extreme example of this kind is the painting Le Fou de Peur (Portrait de l'artiste)/The Man
Mad with Fear (Portrait of the Artist) from around 1844/45, which at one point was also exhibited
under the title Le Suicide/The Suicide. It is not clear whether the subject is someone mad with fear,
suicidal, or pursuing a chimera.The painting appears to have been left unfinished in the lower section;
to contemporaries, it must have looked like a sketch—although Courbet did not label it as such in his
exhibition of 1855. If Courbet did indeed consider his self-portrait to be finished, it may be understood
as a programmatic statement. Such an approach is both bold and perilous: one sees the artist’s hand in
the truest sense of the word here. In the white area on the lower right, there is a faintly discernible
outline of a hand with splayed fingers, which is, in fact, a painted imprint. Before the eyes of the
public, the ambitious artist is taking a leap into the unknown, into something completely new. Is it
death? Or is it the ‘new painting’ into which Courbet is plunging by cutting loose from tradition?
Independence and Individuality
"I quite simply wanted to extract a rational and independent sense of my own individuality from
complete knowledge of tradition."
The individuality of an artist, founded in tradition but essentially independent, had rarely been as
strongly accentuated. Courbet does not perceive himself as an aloof genius, conforming to
academic norms in response to the promptings of a “higher power.” Rather, although he knows all
about tradition, he is answerable only to himself in everything he does and does not do. This
approach has governed artists’ views of themselves ever since, which is one reason why presenting
Courbet’s work in the context of a collection of modern art like the Fondation Beyeler’s is so
fascinating. Could it be that Courbet, this individualist and avant-garde spirit who made the
bewildering variety and irrationality of pictorial modes the subject of works of art, was the first
“modern” artist?
As from 1844, Courbet took part regularly in the Salon, his works received medals/prizes/awards, and
the French State bought some of his paintings. A number of his canvases, for example his realistic Un
Enterrement à Ornans/A Burial at Ornans from 1850, provoked indignation. The jury considered the
realistically painted faces of the country folk taking part in the funeral to be scandalous because the
painting’s huge size placed it in the category of history painting, in which farmers had no place.
The Jura Mountains, the Lake, the Snow: Courbet’s Revolutionary Use of Paint
After 1855, most of the paintings Courbet did were landscapes; he had by then already painted all his
realistic masterpieces. Landscapes not only provided him with an opportunity to demonstrate his
artistic individuality, but also sold well. Courbet’s style soon constituted a trademark, and there
was demand for his products. The majority of his landscapes depict the area around Ornans, where he
grew up.
A recurrent and striking motif in Courbet’s landscapes is the transition between high-lying plateau (the
countryside around Flagey) and valley (Ornans) that is characteristic of the mountainous Jura region
from which he came. Courbet displays a realistic gaze in his landscapes, not an idealising one. Even if
his paintings were generally produced in the studio, they testify to a detailed study of nature in the
places they portray.
When one visits the high plateaus traversed by deep valleys and with spectacular rock formations,
dark rivers, and imposing grottoes from which springs shoot forth, one immediately notices the
virtuosity of Courbet, who seems to form the geological structures of the rocks with paint. One
particularly good example of this is La Source du Lison/The Source of the Lison from 1864. Its
superimposed layers have an astonishing spatial effect, but when one draws closer to it, everything
dissolves into clearly discernible brushstrokes that convey a three-dimensional impression of rock
formations. Similarly, in La Source de la Loue/The Source of the Loue, also from 1864, the pale,
generally unmixed pigments make the substance of the rocks and water seem to dissolve into an
abstract mass of colour. The result is an apparently powerful and dynamic nature, the pure, authentic
form of which corresponds to Courbet’s sensory perception of the motif.
Courbet exploited the material qualities of paint in a way that was wholly unfamiliar at the time. It
seems he would apply it with a brush, a knife, a cloth or even with his thumb. His intensive use of the
palette knife played a particularly important role. A palette knife, which is like a small builder’s trowel,
was generally used by painters to mix paint on their palettes. Courbet, however, used one to apply paint
directly to the canvas, so that his paintings seem to have been “constructed” rather than painted.
Le Coup de vent, forêt de Fontainebleau/The Gust of Wind from 1865 demonstrates Courbet’s special
way of applying paint. This outstanding work, the largest landscape painting in his oeuvre, was
commissioned as part of the decorations for a Parisian villa and shows a gathering storm. The full
breadth of Courbet’s mastery and extraordinary modernity is revealed here. The theme of this bold
composition is movement in the form of wind. It also shows Courbet’s differentiated treatment of paint,
which is sometimes applied in a detailed way with a fine brush and in other places seems to be
positively “stormy”, thanks to dynamically applied layers of paint, which each seem to shimmer
through the next, and which possess a very free, almost abstract quality.
In Courbet’s paintings of calm or stormy seas, the apparent transformation of paint into form has such
a direct impact that Paul Cézanne exclaimed: “It [the sea] hits you right in the stomach. You have
to step back. The entire room feels the spray.” A remark made by Joan Miró about La Vague (The
Wave) expresses a similar reaction: the painting’s presence would be felt, he said, even if the
viewer’s back were turned. Courbet’s painting technique enabled him to work very quickly and he
even boasted to colleagues that he used one shade of color for the sky, then another for the sea,
and then one for the beach. Was he simply mocking the public or boasting to a fellow artist? Or
was he really describing a radical reduction in the means of painting? Certainly, three shades of
color combined with gestural painting produced works that today rank among Courbet’s most
strikingly beautiful and atmospheric.
Women and Water
Courbet’s pictures of naked women beside water, surrounded by verdant undergrowth, were produced in
the years between 1866 and 1868. The more or less identically sized paintings La Jeune
Baigneuse/The Young Bather, 1866, Les Trois Baigneuses/The Three Bathers, 1865-68 and La
Source/The Source, 1868 shown in the exhibition are variations on the theme of the oneness of woman
and nature, a subject with a long tradition in art history. Female personifications of springs, along with
fair maidens frolicking in rivers, grottoes and lakes, have been created since antiquity. Woman as an
intermediary between spring water and vegetation embodies fertility, initiation and sexuality. Courbet
deliberately capitalises on the fact that this motif carries an erotic charge. La Source from 1868 evokes
similar motifs to those found in Ingres. Courbet, on the other hand, refuses to idealise his female
protagonist. The skin of the naked figure seen from the rear, the unevenness of which is emphasised by
the painter, seems to be real. The focus on female curves, which was achieved by the painter or by the
corset commonly worn at the time, did not correspond to contemporary ideas of beauty either. For most
of Courbet’s contemporaries, such at times exaggerated realism was shocking.
The Dark Centre of Courbet’s painting
Courbet’s representations of grottoes and of waves all have a dark, mysterious centre. Courbet said he
constructed his paintings out of darkness, that he then moulded through the way he painted light. That
technique is, for example, apparent in the representation of the dark blue jacket of the right hand
hunter in Braconniers dans la neige/Poachers in the Snow from 1867, which the painter models with
sparingly applied colour accents.
In other cases, Courbet’s landscapes display rocks that seem to gravitate around a dark, almost
inchoate centre like water or the mouths of grottos or the inside of the wave. Courbet’s doubtless most
famous painting L'Origine du Monde/The Origin of the World from 1866 fascinates viewers with its
similar pictorial construction. Art historians see parallels in regard of both form and content. The 19th
century obsession with (largely male) sexual fantasies spawned an elaborate set of tools for
representing them more or less explicitly. Courbet was a master of erotic suggestion and that has
naturally led to his grotto paintings—even those without female figures—being seen as
anthropomorphic landscapes. Do the grottoes allude to female genitalia?
(The press dossier contains an additional text relating to L'Origine du monde.)
Epilogue
Courbet’s exquisite, small seascape Le Bord de mer à Palavas/The Sea at Palavas from 1854, which
presumably shows the artist himself, provides a spirited finale to the exhibition at the Fondation
Beyeler.
The last years of Courbet’s life were dramatic. In the course of his career, he not only became very
popular with collectors but also possibly the most exhibited artist of his time, yet he had less luck on
the political front. With the creation of the Third Republic in 1870, he was appointed President of the
Arts Commission, but the capitulation of the Commune put an abrupt end to his career. He was held
responsible for the destruction of the Vendôme Column, although his direct participation in that event
has still not been proven even today. To permit the reconstruction of the column, he was sentenced to
an exorbitantly high fine, which he would never have been able to pay despite the confiscation of his
property. After a period of imprisonment in Paris and the looting of his studio, Courbet was forced into
exile in 1873. At the age of 58, he died in Switzerland where – vainly awaiting a pardon – he kept on
creating new works until the very end, in the hope that he would one day be able to settle his debt.
Catalogue
The Fondation Beyeler is publishing a catalogue in English and German to accompany the exhibition.
The bookshop edition is being published by Hatje Cantz Verlag, Ostfildern. The lavishly illustrated
catalogue contains essays by Ulf Küster, Stéphane Guégan, Michel Hilaire, Laurence Madeline, Bruno
Mottin and James Rubin. 200 pages, 131 illustrations, price: 62.50 CHF (ISBN 978-3-906053-18-9,
English edition: ISBN 978-3-906053-19-6). It can also be purchased online from the Fondation
Beyeler’s shop at the following address: shop.fondationbeyeler.ch
Fondation Beyeler thanks: Artephila Stiftung, Ernst Göhner Stiftung and Walter Haefner Stiftung for
their generous support and contributions which made the exhibition possible.
Press images: are available for download at http://pressimages.fondationbeyeler.ch
Further information:
Elena DelCarlo, M.A.
Head of PR / Media Relations
Tel. + 41 (0)61 645 97 21, presse@fondationbeyeler.ch, www.fondationbeyeler.ch
Fondation Beyeler, Beyeler Museum AG, Baselstrasse 77, CH-4125 Riehen, Switzerland
Fondation Beyeler opening hours: 10 am - 6 pm daily, Wednesdays until 8 pm
The Origin of the World
The sensation of the “Gustave Courbet” exhibition is a painting that is among the most famous and
indeed notorious in art history: The Origin of the World. The work is at the same time a taboo breaker
and a milestone, a tribute to women and to voyeurism, superb art and provocation. The painting’s
secret lies in these contradictions: is what is celebrated here the birthplace of mankind, of the world or
even of painting or does the canvas merely record a man’s way of looking (gaze) at a woman? Is
Courbet the voyeur here or are we all voyeurs? Maybe Courbet also wanted to show that photography,
which had just started to spread (make an impact), could on no account outdo painting. This is the
complex context within which one must consider the importance of this painting, which was originally
not even intended for public viewing and which the respected French daily Le Monde recently
described as “a kind of second Mona Lisa“.
Courbet painted it for the Egyptian diplomat Khalil Bey, who kept it hidden behind a green curtain,
showing it only to selected guests. How suitable it is that this provocative, profound work was at one
point owned by Jacques Lacan, one of the 20th century’s most important psychoanalysts. The painting
was not shown to the general public until 1995, when it was transferred to the Musée d‘Orsay. The
Fondation Beyeler is the first museum in the German-speaking part of Europe to show this piece of art
history, which, even today, still constantly challenges to viewers to read it, think about it and interpret
it differently.
The title The Origin of the World, which was presumably chosen by Courbet, alludes to woman’s lifegiving function, and can hence inspire anything from a voyeuristic reading to a philosophical
contemplation. At the outset, however, there is always the act of procreation, which is driven by sexual
desire. Yet with his masterly art, the soft brushstroke and finely graduated palette, Courbet gives the
body a sensuousness/sensuality in the tradition of a Venetian painting. Courbet compared himself with
Titian and Veronese – in his typically immodest way he reportedly told a group of friends assembled at
Khalil Bey’s residence who had just viewed the painting : “You find it beautiful—and you’re right. Yes,
it is beautiful, and listen, Titian, Veronese, your Raphael, and myself, we’ve done nothing more
beautiful than this.”
7 September 2014 – 18 January 2015
01 Gustave Courbet
Le Bord de mer à Palavas, 1854
The Sea at Palavas
Oil on canvas, 38 x 46.2 cm
Musée Fabre, Montpellier Agglomération
© Musée Fabre, Montpellier Agglomération / Frédéric Jaulmes
03 Gustave Courbet
Le Coup de vent, forêt de Fontainebleau, 1865
The Gust of Wind
Oil on canvas, 146.7 x 230.8 cm
The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Museum purchase funded by
Caroline Wiess Law
Photo: Thomas R. DuBrock
06 Gustave Courbet
La Source, 1868
The Source
Oil on canvas, 128 x 97 cm
Musée d‘Orsay, Paris
© bpk / RMN - Grand Palais / Patrice Schmidt
04 Gustave Courbet
La Roche Pourrie, étude géologique, 1864
The Roche-Pourrie, Geological Study
Oil on canvas, 60 x 73 cm
Musée Max Claudet, Salins-les-Bains
Photo: Henri Bertand
07 Gustave Courbet
La Rencontre (Bonjour Monsieur Courbet), 1854
The Meeting (Bonjour Monsieur Courbet)
Oil on canvas, 132.4 x 151 cm
Musée Fabre, Montpellier Agglomération
© Musée Fabre, Montpellier Agglomération / Frédéric Jaulmes
02 Gustave Courbet
Le Fou de peur (Portrait de l’artiste), ca. 1844/45
The Man Mad with Fear (Le Fou de peur)
Oil on paper on canvas, 60.5 x 50.5 cm
The National Museum of Art, Architecture, and Design, Oslo
05 Gustave Courbet
La Vague, ca. 1869
The Wave
Oil on canvas, 65.4 x 88.7 cm
Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Mrs. Horace Havemeyer
08 Gustave Courbet
Le Change, épisode de chasse au chevreuil en Franche-Comté, 1866
The Ruse, Deer Hunting in the Franche-Comté
Oil on canvas, 97 x 130 cm
Ordrupgaard, Copenhagen
Photo: Pernille Klemp
FONDATION BEYELER
7 September 2014 – 18 January 2015
09 Gustave Courbet
L’Origine du monde, 1866
The Origin of the World
Oil on canvas, 46 x 55 cm
Musée d’Orsay, Paris
© bpk / RMN / Hervé Lewandowski
10 Gustave Courbet
La Source du Lison, 1864
The Source of the Lison
Oil on canvas, 91 x 73 cm
Private collection
Photo: Paul Mutino
11 Gustave Courbet
Les Trois Baigneuses, 1865–68
The Three Bathers
Oil on paper on canvas, 126.5 x 95 cm
Petit Palais, Musée des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris
© Petit Palais, Musée des Beaux-Arts
de la Ville de Paris / Eric Emo
12 Gustave Courbet
Courbet au chien noir (Portrait de l’artiste), 1842
Self-Portrait with Black Dog
Oil on canvas, 46.5 x 55.5 cm
Petit Palais, Musée des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris
© bpk / RMN – Grand Palais / Jacques L’Hoir / Jean Popovich
13 Gustave Courbet
Paysage du Jura (Rochers d’Ornans, le matin), ca. 1851
Jura Landscape at Ornans
Oil on canvas, 54 x 65 cm
Kunstmuseum St.Gallen, Sturzeneggersche Gemäldesammlung,
acquired 1937
Photo: Sebastian Stadler
14 Gustave Courbet
Effet de neige, ca. 1868
Snow Scene
Oil on canvas, 72 x 92 cm
French and Company, New York
15 Gustave Courbet
Marine, marée basse, 1865
Seascape, Low Tide
Oil on canvas, 64.7 x 79.3 cm
Bristol Museums & Art Gallery
Press images http://pressimages.fondationbeyeler.ch
The visual material may be used solely for press purposes in connection with reporting on the exhibition. Reproduction is permitted only in
connection with the current exhibition and for the period of its duration. Any other kind of use – in analogue or digital form – must be authorised by the
copyright holder(s). Purely private use is excluded from that provision. Please use the captions given and the associated copyrights.
We kindly request you to send us a complimentary copy.
An image of L’Origine du monde, 1866, is available upon request from the Fondation Beyeler’s Press Office.
FONDATION BEYELER
Chronology
1819
Jean Désiré Gustave Courbet is born on June 10 at Ornans, near Besançon, in Franche-Comté. His
father, Régis Courbet (1798–1882), is a wealthy landowner; his mother, Sylvie (1794–1871), née
Oudot, comes from an old local family. Gustave has four younger sisters: Clarisse (1821–1834), Zoé
(1824–1905), Zélie (1828–1875), and Juliette (1831–1915).
1831–37
Courbet attends the seminary in Ornans. In 1833 he begins receiving tuition in art at the seminary from
Claude-Antoine Beau, a pupil of Antoine Jean Gros. In 1834 he produces his first painting to have
survived, Portrait de jeune garçon.
1837
Courbet attends the Collège Royale in Besançon. He takes courses in drawing given by Charles Antoine
Flajoulot, a pupil of Louis David, at the local art academy.
1839–43
In the fall Courbet moves to Paris. Though he probably does so in order to study law, he schools himself
as an artist by copying works in the Louvre and receives tuition from Carl von Steuben and Nicolas
Auguste Hesse. He also attends the private academies of Charles Suisse and Père Lapin. In 1841 he
visits the seaside town of Le Havre for the first time. That year he also begins submitting work to the
annual Salon exhibition in Paris.
1844
After failing for three years in succession, he is included in the Salon for the first time, exhibiting the
self-portrait Courbet au chien noir.
1847
Courbet makes the acquaintance of philosopher, social theorist, and anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
(1809–1865) and of writer Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867).
In September he travels to Belgium, probably in the company of writer Jules Champfleury (1821–
1889). His son, Alfred Émile (1847–1872), is born. The mother, Virginie Binet (1808–1865), sits
regularly for Courbet, who does not legally acknowledge his paternity.
1848
Courbet does not participate in the February Revolution, but designs the headpiece of Le Salut public,
a newspaper founded by Baudelaire, Champfleury, and Charles Toubin (1820–1891). He is a regular
visitor to the Brasserie Andler, which is frequented by Realist writers and artists. The Salon is mounted
without selection by jury: all paintings submitted are exhibited, including ten by Courbet.
1849
Courbet receives a gold medal from the reinstituted Salon jury for Une après-dînée à Ornans, which is
purchased by the French state.
1850
Courbet submits nine paintings to the 1850–51 Salon. Thanks to the gold medal he was awarded the
previous year the jury accepts all nine works, including the “trilogy of Realism”: Un enterrement à
Ornans, Les Casseurs de pierre, and Les Paysans de Flagey revenant de la foire.
1852
Virginie Binet leaves Courbet to settle with their son in Dieppe. Minister of the Interior Charles-Auguste,
duc de Morny, purchases one of Courbet’s work, which is shown at the Salon.
1853
In the fall Courbet travels in Switzerland, visiting Bern and Fribourg. Alfred Bruyas (1821–1877), the
wealthy son of a Montpellier banker, purchases two of the three works by Courbet exhibited at the
Salon. Henceforth one of the artist’s most important patrons, Bruyas commissions Tableau-solution
from him in June. Two further portrait commissions will follow in 1854.
1854
From May to September Courbet stays with Bruyas in Montpellier, where he paints La Rencontre and Le
Bord de mer à Palavas.
1855
The Exposition universelle in Paris includes eleven of the fourteen works submitted by Courbet. Outside
the Exposition he mounts a solo exhibition in a specially erected “Pavilion of Realism.” The forty works
on show there include L’Atelier du peintre.
1857
He visits Brussels, then travels to Frankfurt am Main. The Salon jury accepts all six paintings submitted
by him.
1858–59
Courbet stays in Frankfurt until the spring of 1859 and, while there, hunts in the Taunus mountains.
1860
“Wagner et Courbet” by Champfleury appears in the daily Courrier de Paris.
1861
At the Salon Courbet shows hunting scenes, animal paintings, and landscapes. He receives an award
again. He is a member of the committee selecting French contributions to the International Exhibition
due to be held in London the following year. Some students ask Courbet to teach them, but the studio
he opens for the purpose in December will close again in April 1862.
1862
Courbet is represented at the International Exhibition in London by two paintings. He spends the
summer in the Saintonge region. He paints mainly floral still lifes and landscapes.
1864
He spends most of the year at Ornans, where he paints many landscapes.
1865
The artist spends September to November at Trouville, where he meets Claude Monet (1840–1926)
and James Abbott McNeill Whistler (1834–1903)
1866
Courbet is commissioned by diplomat Khalil-Bey (1831–1879) to paint Le Sommeil. Courbet also
paints L’Origine du monde for him.
1867
During the Exposition universelle he again organizes a separate exhibition, featuring more than one
hundred of his works; at the Exposition itself he is represented by four.
1869
In August and September Courbet stays at Étretat in Normandy, where he paints coastal landscapes
and pictures of the sea. In Munich an entire gallery is set aside for his work at the Internationale
Kunstausstellung. King Ludwig II of Bavaria awards him the Knight’s Cross of the Order of St. Michael.
In late September the artist paints five pictures in Munich.
1870
Courbet is nominated for the Légion d’honneur, but refuses the honor in an open letter.
July 19: France declares war on Prussia.
September 1: Napoleon III is taken captive after the French capitulate at the Battle of Sedan.
September 4: The Third Republic is proclaimed in Paris.
September 6: Courbet is elected President of the Commission des arts. He is to organize the
safeguarding of Paris’s art treasures until the end of hostilities.
September 14: He calls for the demolition of the Vendôme Column, erected to celebrate French
victories in the Napoleonic Wars.
October 29: A convinced pacifist, he reads in public his “À l’armée allemande et aux artistes
allemandes,” which calls for an end to the war.
1871
March 18: The Commune is established in Paris.
April 16: Courbet is elected to the council of the Paris Commune.
May 16: The Vendôme Column is dismantled by order of the Commune.
May 28: The Commune capitulates to the regular French army.
June 3: Courbet’s mother dies.
June 7: Courbet is arrested and charged with responsibility for the destruction of the Vendôme Column.
September 2: Found guilty of complicity in the demolition of the Vendôme Column, he is sentenced to
six months’ imprisonment and ordered to pay a fine of 500 francs.
September 22: He is committed to Sainte-Pélagie prison in Paris. Health problems cause him to be
transferred on December 30 to a clinic in Neuilly, where he remains until the following April.
1872
May 1: On returning to Paris, Courbet finds that his studio has been looted in his absence. He spends
May to September in Ornans and its environs. With the help of his assistants Cherubino Pata and
Marcel Ordinaire he produces many views of Ornans, along with snow landscapes and seascapes.
1873
Courbet’s court case is reopened.
May 30: The National Assembly votes to reerect the Vendôme Column. Work is to begin when the sum
to be paid by Courbet in restitution has been specified. All his property is confiscated.
July 23: Courbet goes into exile in Switzerland, settling at La Tour-de-Peilz, on Lake Geneva, in
October. He starts painting views of Chillon Castle and Lake Geneva.
He shows a selection of paintings, including L’Atelier du peintre, at the Austrian Art Association during
the World’s Fair in Vienna.
1874–75
June 26, 1874: Courbet alone is declared legally responsible for destroying the Vendôme Column. The
judgment is confirmed on August 6, 1875.
1876
Courbet vainly attempts to obtain a pardon from the new republican government.
1877
May 4: Courbet is ordered to pay the total cost of rebuilding the Vendôme Column, which amounts to
323,091 francs and 68 centimes. His health deteriorates. Courbet dies on December 31.
Gustave Courbet
Gustave Courbet is a key figure in art history. His painting and his personality as an artist not only left a
mark on 19th century art but still have an impact today. He was in many respects a forerunner of
Modernism and it is far from coincidental if painters like Cézanne, Matisse, and Picasso referred back
to him and if Gerhard Richter and Peter Doig consider him an inspiration. The Fondation Beyeler has
therefore decided to devote an exhibition to this early avant-garde master in which it sets out to
highlight the modernity of his work.
The exhibition – like Courbet’s career – opens with the self-portraits with which the young painter
sought to make a name for himself in the Parisian art world. Courbet, who came from the provinces, at
first had difficulty in establishing himself in the sophisticated, fast-paced capital with its hordes of
painters. That this could sometimes result in despair and fear that were then compensated for by
excessive self-confidence is demonstrated by the various poses adopted by the young man from the
Franche-Comté: at first rather brashly in a dark, Rembrandt-like setting and then as a Fou de peur – a
man mad with fear – he tries out both his talent as a painter and his personality in different settings. In
those works, one can already see characteristics that accompanied Courbet throughout his life and that
were to bring him fame: a fondness for self-representation, for posing, for scandal. That consciousness
of the need for a media presence and a skilful self-stylisation made him one of the first modern artists.
Particularly because Courbet – at least on the surface – broke with all traditions: he wanted to be
independent, unbeholden to any patron, academy, government, or even God. Instead, he relied totally
on himself and on his individuality as a painter. As an individualist, he was to change art
fundamentally: he stood for a new view of landscape painting, without classical structure and with
subjects drawn from his own life. His representations of snow, water, waves, clouds, and beaches, with
their limited palette of apparently rapidly applied paint herald Impressionism. His female nudes by the
water, which play with tradition, expectation, allusion, and conceptions of beauty, are ambivalent and
exciting. When Courbet paints winter, his pigment becomes the equivalent of snow while his
representations of grottos are literally built up out of thick layers of paint. Cézanne was particularly
impressed by that, while Miró said that the presence of Courbet’s waves would still be felt even if the
viewer’s back were turned.
GUSTAVE COURBET
Ed. Fondation Beyeler
By Ulf Küster
English
Ca. 128 pp., ca. 40 ills.,
12 x 19 cm, softcover
€ 14.80, $25.00, £13.99
978-3-7757-3877-4
| Discovering an artist-revolutionary
| A fascinating journey into the art of Realism
Gustave Courbet (1819–1877) is considered to have introduced the
practice of socially engaged painting, and he is viewed as one of the
most important representatives of Realism. The direct and honest
depictions of this artistic tendency—which ascribed to representing
things as they are—challenged the idealized subject matter of
academic painting and scandalized the Parisian society of the nineteenth century. Courbet became a leading figure of the rebellious
artistic bohème and cultivated a lively exchange with the predominant poets and artists of his era. However, he was not merely an
anti-establishment provocateur; he significantly revolutionized
landscape painting. With seven essays this volume offers an introduction to selected aspects of the artist’s life and work. His paintings will also inspire even those who may not be well versed in the
world of art. Courbet’s incredibly rich oeuvre and his exciting biography make him an artist worth discovering, again and again.
(German edition ISBN 978-3-7757-3861-3)
In conjunction with this exhibition a catalogue (German edition
ISBN 978-3-7757-3862-0, English edition ISBN 978-3-7757-3863-7) and
a volume in the E-Books series (German edition ISBN 978-3-77573867-5, English edition ISBN 978-3-7757-3878-1).
Exhibition: Fondation Beyeler, Riehen/Basel 7.9.2014–18.1.2015
Sales: Evelin Georgi
sales@hatjecantz.de
Press D, A, CH: Meike Gatermann
presse@hatjecantz.de
International Press: Caroline Schilling
c.schilling@hatjecantz.de
More information at www.hatjecantz.com
Partners of the Fondation Beyeler 2014
Public Funds
Main Partners
Partners
Media Partners
FONDATION BEYELER