AN EXHIBITION OF PAINTINGS BY

COURBET
AN EXHIBITION OF PAINTINGS BY

COURBET

Catalog

THE HILLA VON REBAY FOUNDATION

77 MORNINGSIDE DRIVE
GREENS FARMS, CONNECTICUT 06436

THE BALTIMORE MUSEUM OF ART

TAay 3 - 29, 1938
v 61 fci

par GIIX,
 C O LI R B E T

riT is hardly likely that one looking at an exhibition of Courbet's

^pictures in 1938 could see in them that element of strangeness
which the painter's contemporaries saw in his work. If one con-
fines oneself to the paint and canvas, one sees pictures which
resemble a host of academic productions. Their fellows are to be
found in scores of the most respectable museums throughout the
two hemispheres. They do not seem bizarre in either technique
or subject matter. We are accustomed today to pictures which
resemble nothing and have no interest in resembling anything; if

their makers have succeeded in producing a harmonious pattern,

they are satisfied. They are no longer created exclusively of paint.
Bits of glass, newspaper, string, cloth are assembled to give texture
to them and a shock to their observers. But the canvases of Cour-
bet are not revolutionary in any such sense as this. The brush-
work and drawing — most part—
for the are traditional; their sub-
ject matter —peasants, workmen, huntsmen, girls —not unusual. But
it is impossible to limit either the interest or the significance of a
picture within its frame. A painting has the unfortunate habit of
overflowing the molding that surrounds it, of becoming a symbol,
a hieroglyph, a war cry, a moral lesson, a warning.
was perhaps that fringe beyond the frame of Courbet's pictures
It

which made them seem strange and even dangerous to their

author's contemporaries. Painters before Courbet had painted
peasants, but who had painted them so that they looked as if their
labor was a penalty for sins which they had not committed? We
doubtless can no longer see that element in them, just as we are no
longer sensitive to the influence of chivalric ethics in Hamlet or to
the buffoonery of Shylock. Courbet's contemporaries saw the
Stone Crushers as socialistic propaganda; saw the Burial at Ornans
as cruel satire; saw the Demoiselles des bords de la Seine as por-
nography. Nothing of that could be on the canvas unless one
knew a great deal that was behind the canvas. Certain conven-
tions about the subject matter of art — whether it be pictorial or

not — were accepted as the sole legitimate subjects.

Art must, in the first place, strive for beauty and beauty must be
graceful, noble, edifying. Subjects which were not in themselves
recognized as beautiful must be embellished. Thus, the peasants
and fishermen of Leopold Robert were given the bodies of classical

deities and the poses of Hellenistic sculptures. They were, one

might say, the children of the Arcadian shepherds. Just as Violetta
in La Jraviata, dying of tuberculosis, looks as buxom and blooming
as she did at her entrance on the scene, so a peasant to be fit

for paint and canvas must have clean hands and face and a fine
physique. That the average peasant was badly nourished, lacked
sufficient vitamins in his diet, and was as twisted and gnarled as
an ancient tree might be true, but the average peasant was not to
be represented in art. Only the peasant as a symbol of rural beauty
would be permitted.
But art, in the second place, must set itself the task of teaching
a great moral lesson. you painted the Spartans at Thermopyle,
If

you did it to teach Frenchmen to be patriotic. If you painted an

old man,you did it to show the tragedy of senility, or its serenity,

or homely charm. If you painted a landscape, you did it to
its

awaken a sense of nostalgia for the country, to declare the glory

of God, to hymn the industry of the peasant. Great moral lessons
unfortunately are frequently ambiguous. It is only when they
happen by some lucky chance to fit in with tradition that their
meaning is clear and simple. When one's feelings for religious values
have shifted, a picture expressing such sentiments must be capable
of shifting its significance too or it dies. We can, for instance, no
longer look at a primitive idol and feel the religious awe that its

makers felt. A Buddhist priest robe from China with its multiple
patches becomes for us a beautiful piece of brocade to be hung
on a wall; we are insensitive to its religious symbolism. So with
many paintings of the Renaissance — Mystic Marriages, even Cruci-
fixions and Last Suppers — with their personages In Italian court
costume; we them "worldly" and wonder that their makers
call

could have thought of them as "other-worldly." Consequently there

is no telling in advance what idea a man of 1938 will read into a

picture of 1538 and if it were the ideas which gave importance to

a picture or piece of sculpture, few works of art would have any

interest for men of a later day.
The innovation for which Courbet was in the main responsible
was the insistence that works of art needed neither to be embellish-
ments nor symbols of an idea. Anything which existed in nature
was to him interesting as a possible picture. If peasants were ugly
and workmen depressing, if women were fat and awkward and men
were commonplace and dull, let them be represented as such. The
artistwas to take the attitude of the scientist to whom all fact was
on the same level. The biologist makes no distinction between
beautiful and ugly animals; to the chemist a substance with a foul
odor is as interesting as one with a flower-like scent. The pleasant
and the unpleasant belong to the realm of human emotion; they
have no place in "nature" if that term means the non-human.
But the "natural" covers a variety of things which only the
nineteenth century had begun to think of as natural. Before that
period human beings were almost supernatural, or at least they
were not believed to obey the same laws as animals, vegetables,
and minerals. It was not until 1828 that biochemistry was put
upon a laboratory basis. The first suggestion of a scientific soci-
ology dates from the same period. Scientific psychology had to
wait until the third quarter of the century. It was 1866 when Men-
del promulgated his famous law that genetics could be thought of
as more than a symptom of divine rewards and punishments. In
fact it is not unfair to say that one of the really great achievements
of the nineteenth century was the scientific interpretation of human
life.

The transfer of the scientific attitude towards mankind from the

classroom and laboratory to literature and the other arts was begun
in the Second Empire. Other times had praised Nature and urged
the life according to Nature, but only at that period had Nature
lost her picturesqueness, her capriciousness, moral qualities and
become the realm of fact. In literature the movement was spon-
sored by Zola; in sculpture, by Rodin; in music, by Berlioz and
the composers of such operas as Carmen, Louise, Jbe Qirl of the

Qolden West, Pagliacci, Jbe jewels of the jMadonna, La Bobeme,

in painting, by Courbet. Each of these men had his predecessors

and his disciples. No individual, of course, can be credited with

so great a cultural trend as Realism. But these are the names that
stand out justly in history, for these are the men who on the whole
were held responsible for it by their contemporaries.

To be realistic, one may say at some risk of superficiality, is to

believe that a fact is interesting in its own right as artistic subject

matter. It is to explore every field of human life in search of new
material, regardless of what popular esteem may say. It is to dis-
regard the picturesque, the pretty, the edifying; to allow the ob-
servers and readers and listeners to draw their own conclusions.
It is therefore a philosophy as well as an aesthetic creed. Because
of Courbet's place in this movement, as well as because of the
intrinsic interest of his canvases, it is fitting that the Baltimore
Museum of Art, situated in a city renowned for its university,
sponsor an exhibition of his work. To make this exhibition pos-

sible was necessary to rely upon the good will and kindly interest
it

of collectors and museums throughout the country. Nothing is

less agreeable to a collector and to a museum public than to look

at the empty spaces on a wall usually occupied by some master-

piece. Our own public realizes this and is therefore doubly grate-
ful to the owners of the pictures listed in the Acknowledgments

for their generous loans. It is hoped that they will be repaid in

some measure by their contribution to our knowledge of nineteenth-

century art, so frequently misunderstood, as well as by the increased
admiration which such an exhibition is bound to produce for the
painter of Ornans.
George Boas
Secretary of the Board of Trustees
 ,

CHRONOLOGY
1819 Courbet horn on June I Oth at Ornans in the department
of the Doubs.
1830 Enters seminary where he studied drawing under Beau, a
pupil of Baron Gros, who takes him on sketching expeditions
into the country.

1837 Enters Royal College of Besancon, where the drawing classes

are conducted by Flajoulot, a member of the school of
David. Withdraws from college to enter municipal art

school.

1839 His first published work, four lithographs illustrating a book

of poems by his friend, Max Buchon of Salins. (Two por-

traits of Buchon by Courbet exist, one at the Hotel de Ville

at Salins, the other in the museum at Vevey.)

1840 Arrives at Paris to begin his legal studies. The plan is

never carried out and Courbet instead begins to study art,

associating with Steuben and making frequent visits to the

Louvre. During this period he paints several landscape
studies in Fontainbleau and executes portrait commissions.

1842 Hires a studio and paints his Courbet au chien noir, now in

the Petit Palais.

1844 Courbet au chien noir accepted by the Salon.

1845 Le Quitarrero (see no. 1 below) accepted out of five can-

vases submitted to the Salon.

1847 The Salon refuses three of his pictures: £e Violoncelliste,

£"Homme a la pipe (now at the Museum of Montpellier)
and a portrait of Urbain Cuenot (now in the Academy of
Fine Arts of Philadelphia) . Published a drawing of armed
insurgents in the Salut public, a revolutionary paper which
lasts but two issues.
Trip to Holland where he is impressed with Ostade and
Craesbeeck and writes home that he "venerates Holbein/'
1849 The exhibition at the Salon is jury-less. Courbet shows six

canvases.
Is given a second prize for the Apres-dtnee ft Ornans which
the government buys for the Museum of Lille.

1850-1851 Violent criticism of his canvases at the Salon: the Burial

at Ornans, the Return from the fair, the Stone-Breakers,
with others.
1855 Opens his own exhibition in competition with the world's
fair on June 28th, 7 Avenue Montaigne. Forty canvases and
four drawings exhibited. Among them the Atelier, now in
ff
the Louvre. The term realism" is launched. In the fore-

word to his catalog Courbet says, "The label of realist was

imposed upon me as the label of romanticist was imposed
on the men of 1830. Labels have never given a fair idea

of fact. If this were not so, works themselves would be

superfluous. ... I have studied without prejudice and with-
out party spirit the art of the ancients and the art of the
moderns. I have no more wished to imitate the former than
to copy the latter. My thoughts, moreover, have never
been to reach the stupid goal of art for art's sake. No, my
wish was simply to perfect in full knowledge of tradition
the rational and independent feeling of my own individual-
ity. —
Knowledge for power such was my thought. Power
to translate the manners, the ideas, the appearance of my
time, according to my own understanding; in a word, to pro-
duce living art, such was my aim/'
1856 £es demoiselles des bords de la Seine.

1857 7be singer, Queymard, in the role of Robert le Biable.

See no. 4 below.
1860 Trip to Frankfort where he is much admired. Exhibition in
Besancon.
1861 Accepts invitation of a group of art students to open a
school.

1863 Exhibition at Saintes.

1866 Friendship with Whistler. Paints Whistler's model, Jo, who
appeared In Jhc White Qirl, under the title o\ La Belle

klandaise. See no. 16 below.

1869 Decorated by Ludwig II of Bavaria.

1 870 Refuses the Legion of Honor.

During the war with Germany heads the federation of artists

which protects works of art.

1S71 Becomes member of the Commune from the Sixth Arron-

dissement. On the sixteenth of May the Colonne Vendome
is pulled clown. Condemned on September 2 to six months
in jail and a fine of five hundred francs. Paints his famous
still lifes of fruits while at Sainte-Pelagie.

1872 Excluded from Salon because of his role during the Com-
mune.
1873 Goes into exile in Switzerland to avoid paying for the
reconstruction of the Colonne Vendome.
1877 Fined 323,091 francs and eight centimes to be paid in yearly
payments of ten thousand francs for reconstruction of the
column. His property seized and sold.
Dies on December 31.
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The Museum is greatly indebted to all those who lent paintings

bv Courbet to this exhibition:

Arnold Seligmann, Rey and Company

The Art Institute of Chicago

Miss Etta Cone

The Detroit Institute of Arts

Arnold Genthe, Esq.

Dr. Douglas H. Gordon

M. Knoedler and Company

Leon Kroll, Esq.

Lewisohn Collection

Lucas Collection, The Maryland Institute

The Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Phillips Memorial Gallery

The Smith College Museum of Art

The Springfield Museum of Fine Arts

Vassar College

Miss Edith Wetmore

Wildenstein and Company

William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art

 .

CATALOG

(The canvases listed below are arranged as far as possible

in chronological order.)

1. Li: Guitarrero (before 1845)

Lent by Miss Edith Wetmore.

One of the earliest Courbets in America. This romantic rep-

resentation of the artist in troubadour's costume — or what he
imagined to be troubadour's costume — is typical of that period
in his youth when he depicted such subjects as Walpurgis
'Night. It was the sole canvas accepted by the Salon of 1845

out of five submitted.

7. Midday Dream (1845)

Lent by the Detroit Institute of Arts.

Exhibited in the Salon of 1849 as La Baicjneuse Sndormie.

The jury of this Salon awarded Courbet his only prize, a
second.

3. GUEYMARD IN THE RoLE OF ROBERT LE DlABLE (before 1857)

Lent by the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Exhibited first in the Salon of 1857. Gueymard, now over-

looked by the encyclopedias — even Grove, was a famous
singer in his day. Born in 1824, he made his debut in the

role depicted here at the age of twenty-four. His greatest

successes were in such operas as Ibe Prophet, William Jell,
Jbe Huguenots. He resigned from the Grand Opera in 1868.
The picture in spirit is perhaps closer to Courbet's romantic
manner than to his realistic.

4. After the Hunt (probably between 1855 and 1860)

Lent by the Metropolitan Museum of Art
(from the Havemeyer Collection)
 ..

One of a number of hunting pictures, including La Bicbe

forcee, Cbasse au Cbevreutl, and La Curee (Boston Museum).

5. Portrait of Monsieur Suisse (1861)

Lent by the Metropolitan Museum of Art
(from the Havemeyer Collection)

6. The Mediterranean (before 1860)

Lent by the Phillips Memorial Gallery.
One of a series of marines which covers the coasts of France
from Palavas (where Courbet began to paint in 1858), through
Royan, to Etretat.

7. Portrait of Madame Oliviers (about 1860)

Lent by Wildenstein and Company.

8. Portrait of Alfred Bruyas (about 1860)

Lent by Arnold Genthe.
Bruyas was one of Courbet's most enthusiastic patrons. He
bought as well as praised. The thirteen Courbets in the Mu-
seum of Montpellier are a bequest of this generous man. He
is shown greeting the painter in the famous canvas called
popularly, Bonjour, 'Monsieur Courbet.

9. The Forest in Winter (probably middle '60's)

Lent by the Cincinnati Art Museum.

10. Young Woman Arranging Flowers (1863)

Lent by Wildenstein and Company

11. Le Puits Noir (about 1864)

Lent by the Springfield Museum of Fine Arts.

The Puits Noir is in the Valley of the Loue, a favorite subject

of Courbet. His first teacher, Beau, used to take him and his

fellow pupils on sketching trips throughout this district.

12. The Source of the Loue (about 1864)

Lent by the Metropolitan Museum of Art
(from the Havemeyer Collection)
13. The Source of the Loue (about 1864)
Lent by Wildcnstcin and Company.

14. Lady With a Cat (1864)

Lent by Wildcnstcin and Company.

Painted in the environs of Ornans during the period of Cour-

bet's return to his home.

15. Portrait of M. Nodler, the Elder (1866)

Lent by the Smith College Museum of Art.

16. Portrait of M. Nodler, the Younger (1866)

Lent by M. Knoedler and Company.

The two Nodler brothers were friends of Courbet whom he

painted during a visit to Deauville-Trouville.

17. La Belle Irlandaise (1865-1866)

Lent by the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art.

Whistler's well-known Jo, who sat for his White Qirl, is the
model for this portrait, of which a second version exists in
the Havemeyer Collection of the Metropolitan Museum, and
a third in a private collection. At least one of the three was
painted during the visit to Deauville.

18. An Alpine Scene (1874)

Lent by the Art Institute of Chicago.

Painted during Courbet's exile in Switzerland, three years

before his death.

(The following canvases require special study before dating.)

19. The Jumping Jack

Lent by Vassar College.

20. Landscape
Lent by Leon Kroll.
21. Self Portrait
Lent by the Lewisohn Collection.

77. La Grotte
Lent by Miss Etta Cone.

23. Landscape
Lent by Arnold Seligmann, Rey and Company.

74. Waterfall
From the Lucas Collection, lent to the Baltimore Museum
of Art by the Maryland Institute.

Meier-Graefe reproduces in his book on Courbet another

version of this picture which at the time of publication was
in the Galerie Heinemann, Munich.

75. Nocturne
Lent by Douglas H. Gordon.
 1. Le Guitarrero
Lent by 5\liss Edith IVetmore
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2. Midday Dream
Cent by the Detroit Institute of Arts
3. GuEYMARD IN THE RoLE OF ROBERT LE DlABLE
Lent by the Metropolitan Museum of Art
7. Portrait of Madame Oliviers

Cent by Wildenstein and Company

 21. Self Portrait

Jbe Lewisohn Collection

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16. Portrait of M. Nodler, the Younger
Lent by ?t\. Xnoedler and Company
19. The Jumping Jack
Lent by Vassar College
 4. After the Hunt
Lent by the Metropolitan Museum of Art
1

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AUTHOR
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May 3-29- r-1938.

DATE BORROWERS NAME DATE

LOANED RETURNED