Patrick Bade
Gustave Courbet

Patrick Bade | Gustave Courbet | 07.04.21

- So I think why don’t you start Patrick.

• Right.

• [Wendy] I don’t want to keep everybody waiting.

Visuals displayed throughout the presentation.

• Right. Well, welcome everybody. Big change today, because we’re leaving behind Romanticism with a capital R, and we’re moving on to Realism with an capital R. Realism, it is again like Romanticism it’s not really a style, it’s a movement. It’s a range of subject matter and a particular attitude towards that subject matter. And its dominance in both visual arts and in literature, in the French Avant Garde, between the 1840s and the 1880s. And it’s linked to materialist, positivist philosophies, a belief in the idea of progress. It’s a particular range of subjects with artists wanting to engage with the real world around them and with the modern age. And so the high priest of Realism, with a capital R, any definition you want to have of it has to really be based on Gustave Courbet.

And the picture you see on the screen is a huge, huge picture. It’s in the Orsay. It is really the key work of his career and the key work of the Realist movement. And it… he… it’s… The title is “The Artist’s Studio”, or it’s called “The Artist’s Studio.” And he subtitled it “A Real Allegory, Seven Years of my Experience and My Art.” So I mean that’s in it, ‘cause straight away real allegory that’s like… like a contradiction in terms. We can’t have really a real allegory, but I’ll come back to that in a minute. So, this picture was exhibited in a one-man show in 1855. 1855 was the first Paris World Exhibition. The first World Exhibition anywhere, of course, was London, it was 1851 and the French didn’t want to be outdone by the Brits, so they really took over with a series of great World Exhibitions at intervals for the rest of the 19th century.

And this was the equivalent of the Crystal Palace, this was the vast exhibition building for the 1855 Expo. And Courbet was initially invited to exhibit in the French section of this exhibition, but he quarrelled with the jury and he withdrew and he built himself this pavilion and this was pretty well, I suppose, the first ever big public one-man show. And at the time people were astonished by this and they saw it as a sign of rampant megalomania on his part. And it got a lot of coverage in the press, a lot of caricatures. He was certainly one of the most talked about people of the time. You got here on the left-hand side surrounded by laurel leaves, four, I suppose today you might say influencers, key cultural influences of the period.

You’ve got the poet Gerard de Nerval. You’ve got Honore de Balzac, the novelist. You’ve got Wagner already, and Gustave Courbet. On the right, a caricature of “The Artist Studio.” And there were many caricatures like this in the press at the time showing, you know, Courbet trying to present himself as the Messiah or some kind of prophet. So, the.. When he presented the picture there was a catalogue and he wrote a kind of statement of intent. It was really something like a manifesto.

And this is what he said, and I’ll read it to you, “The title 'realist’ has been imposed on me in the same way as the title ‘romantic’ was imposed on the men of 1830. Titles have never given the right idea of things; if they did, works would be not necessary. Without going into the question as to the rightness or wrongness of the label which, let us hope, no one is expected to understand fully, I could only offer a few words of explanation which may avert misconception. I have studied the art of the ancients and moderns without any dogmatic or preconceived ideas. I have not tried to imitate the former or to copy the latter, nor have I addressed myself to the pointless objective of ‘art for art’s sake’. No - all I have tried to do is derive, from a complete knowledge of tradition, a reasoned sense of my own independence and individuality. To achieve skill through knowledge - that has been my purpose. To record the manners, ideas and aspect of the age as I myself saw them- to be a man as well as a painter, in short to create living art - that is my aim.”

Well, that doesn’t really help a great deal with the definition of what realism is about. I mean if you… That statement is basically Frank Sinatra singing “My Way.” He’s saying I did it my way. But maybe the key phrase here is “To record the manners, ideas and aspect of the age as I myself saw them.” That is, if you’re going to take something out of that statement. So, it’s a painting, I mean you could easily do a whole lecture on this painting, people have written whole books on the painting. It’s very dense with meaning. Straightaway, he’s… The subtitle he’s saying seven years of my life ‘cause seven years would be the traditional length of time for an apprenticeship, in which you would achieve the role of master.

And in fact, what he intended originally the wall in the background which is now kind of vague and indetermined, he was going to cover it with earlier paintings from his career, but he simply ran out of time. So, let’s look at it area by area. We’ll start off with the centre. Here is at this point still a very handsome Gustave Courbet, with his wonderful, dark, Assyrian beard of which he was very proud. And as you can see, he’s pointing his head sideways to show off this amazing beard that sort of jets out from his chin. And he’s working on a landscape of the area in eastern France from which he originally came from, Ornans.

So I think he’s straightway telling you about his relationship with nature. But notice that this is a landscape that’s being painted in the studio unlike Corot’s sketches or later impressionist pictures, he wasn’t an artist who liked to work from nature out of doors, at least not on a larger scale like this. And two, immediately behind him is a model, a naked woman, and she is usually interpreted as representing his muse or his inspiration. That interestingly it has been shown that the model was not actually painted from life. She was painted from a photograph. I don’t have the exact photograph, but here is a negative of a photograph in the same series from which Courbet took his nude. The most sort of provocative and peak of detail of the whole picture really, is her abandoned clothes on the floor in the foreground.

The French attitude to nudity I am going to be discussing in several lectures coming up particularly a lecture on the Salon. And they’re really complex, and they’re very different from and modern attitudes. I mean, they’re actually totally okay with female nudity, unlike the Brits at the same time in the Royal Academy female nudity had more or less totally disappeared from the walls of the Royal Academy summer exhibition. Whereas the French Salon as we shall see in a week or so, was kind of floor to ceiling wall to wall female nudity. But there were certain rules and certain conventions that had to be obeyed. And as soon as you put the clothes of the naked woman in you’re actually reminded that this is a real woman. And she becomes naked in inverted commas, rather than nude. Nude is really a kind of ideal state, naked is being without your clothes.

And so in fact here I’ll show you top left the insert here is painting of ooh nearly 20 years later by an artist called Gervex that was actually rejected from the Salon not because it’s rather sexy, nude female on the bed. What was thought to be so outrageous was, I mean it’s quite clear that this is a post-coital scene, These two had wonderful sex, and in fact, the man… It’s based on a narrative poem and the man is actually this is his last night of love and he’s about to commit suicide certain he has taken one last look at the woman on the bed. But as I said, the thing that got this painting rejected that people got upset by was the tumble of clothes beside the bed where it’s pretty obvious that he’s ripped off her clothes very quickly.

So the little boy is usually seen again as Courbet talking about his own freshness, and directness of vision. One of Courbet’s great mentors, and he’s actually represented in the picture which you’ll see in a minute, is the poet Charles Baudelaire. And one of my absolute favourite quotes of Charles Baudelaire is “Genius is childhood recaptured at will.” You know that’s as an adult, to retain that sense of wonder. Anybody who has children or grandchildren, you probably even notice rather more with your grandchildren, taking them out shopping. Look at the way this boy is looking up at the painting and looking up at Courbet. Children have this extraordinary sense of wonder and intensity of vision.

And the adult artist should try and retain this. And what about the cat? The cat, so that certainly means something. The white cat in this picture. And I think the cat here is connected with the woman. I mean there’s quite a tradition for this in French art in the 19th century. It was a rather misogynistic idea that women have a particular affinity with animals that men don’t have and in particular with cats. And of course, that is the most famous expression of that is the Manet “Olympia” which dates from 8 years after Courbet’s studio with the black cat, whose stare…. You’re fixed with the double stare of the nude on the bed and the cat, so they’re part of the same creature.

So, another quote here from Courbet from his introduction. This is what he says: “It’s the whole world coming to me to be painted. On the right, all the shareholders, and by that I mean friends, fellow workers, art lovers. On the left, which I’ll show you in a minute, the other world of everyday life, the masses, wretchedness, poverty, wealth, the exploited and the exploiters, people who make a living from death.”

So these are all a positive people, and as far as he sees it. Basically, his friends and supporters. So on the extreme right we’ve got Baudelaire reading a book. The woman is Madame Sabatier, who was a famous courtesan, and she ran a Salon which many poets and intellectuals came. She was lover of Baudelaire for some years. The seated man in the middle is the critic Champfleury, who’d been one of the critics who supported Courbet. And in the background, so you’ve got the photograph of Champfleury, also apparently seated. And you can see it’s quite a good likeness.

The man with the big, red, luxuriant red beard is Alfred Bruyas, who was a wealthy collector who bought many of Courbet’s paintings. And notice he’s turned away from the man behind him, and that is Proudhon, the anarchist philosopher who certainly wouldn’t have approved of Bruyas’ wealth or collecting. The one phrase that everybody knows from Proudhon is “Property is theft.” And, oh here is Madame Sabatier and well, a photograph of her on the left, and a photograph of Baudelaire on the right hand side.

Now we go over to the… This is the negative side of modern life. Now, straightway of course, this brings into question realism. ‘Cause on you’ll never going to find this group of people together in an artist’s studio. This a completely unreal situation, a kind of compilation. And so again, this… You can read through figure by figure what all this is about. First of all, this nude male model who’s strapped to a support so that he can retain this pose of a dying figure. So I think, this is Courbet’s critique of the French academic tradition and its artificiality where you spent years and years drawing these muscular nudes in very artificial poses.

And I think I’ve quoted you before, some of you anyway, Manet when a model came to his studio and went into one of these poses. And Manet said to him derisively, “Oh do you always stand like that when you are queuing for your vegetables in the green grocers.” On the floor, we’ve got a feathered hat, a guitar, and a dagger. What do they mean? They… These are the trappings of Romanticism. And I think Courbet is, he is saying, that we’ve left this. These have been discarded. We’ve left Romanticism behind.

We’ve got this man, he’s not… I don’t think he’s clearly identified. I don’t think we’ve know for sure who he is. The man with his hands on his knees. But it’s a very distinctive pose and it… And a pose which echoes that of one of the most famous portraits of Ingres of the newspaper editor Monsieur Bertin, very influential newspaper editor. So it could be some kind of critique of the new mass circulation newspapers. And then we have the hunter with the hunting dog. See here. Two hunting dogs. And this is usually interpreted 'cause he’s got extremely distinctive facial hair, it’s rather ridiculous moustache with antennae and the long beard. And this I think is particularly a reference to the Emperor Louis Napoleon. Napoleon the III. In fact it’s such an obvious reference I’m rather amazed that Courbet could get away with showing the public… their picture publicly.

And then we have these three pictures… Figures in the background. I’m sorry to say that the one on the left here is the stereotype Jew. The one in the middle is a Catholic priest. And the one here on the right is a merchant. So, Courbet is very, very left wing, very influenced by the ideas of Proudhon. And so this… at this stage, in the middle of the 19th century, you’ve got actually a new type of prejudice against the Jews, which is really from a left-wing point of view, which has nothing to do with killing Christ or, you know, any religious things. It’s really a prejudice which has been engendered by the huge success, particularly in France, of Jewish bankers like the Rothchilds, the Pereire, the and later the Camondo family.

In France since the revolution, of course you’ve got a very strong strain of anti-clericalism and clearly Courbet’s not going to like the Catholic Church and like Proudhon, he doesn’t approve of capitalism or business. So, the merchant is there, all over on the side of these negative people. Courbet is not alone in an attempt to paint a real allegory of modern life. In fact, the most interesting comparisons are on the other side of the Channel. When I was a student at the Courtauld I remember one of our stock questions that students had to do, you know, compare and contrast, of course that’s a key method of learning art history.

I remember having to do a compare and contrast of Courbet’s Studio and this picture by Ford Madox Brown which is exactly contemporary with it. Actually, it was painted over several years but they were being painted at the same time. Which is also you could say a real allegory. It is set in a real place. It’s Heath Street in Hampstead. So some of you, I imagine, got listeners who live not far from there, and you probably recognise some of the buildings. Hasn’t really changed very much since the middle of the 19th century. But… And again, you’ve got… It’s painted with great fidelity to nature. A different kind of realism really from Courbet, I suppose, with its minute detail. But it’s certainly… And that they’re both artists who are looking very hard at reality and trying to give you a very objective view of real things.

But you’ve got an accumulation of grouping of people which would be virtually impossible in modern life. And like “The Artist’s Studio”, it’s really meant to be a picture of society or in this case of British society. And you see the horse riding aristocrats at the top. You can see various middle class people. You can see the workers. It’s also a picture I think painted with quite a left-wing agenda. And you’ve got the underclass and the beggars at the bottom. And coincidentally you have the intellectuals, in this case, Thomas Carlisle and F. D. Morris, again over on the right-hand side of the picture.

And this in a more populist vein, this by the Victorian artist Frith, and it dates from just around the same time and this is the beginning of the 1860s. His painting of Paddington Station where of course you might get a huge crowd of very varied people in a railway station. From that point of view I suppose it could be seen as more like real life. But it’s again a picture where every aspect of British society is represented by a figure in this picture. You’ve got a criminal who’s being arrested. You have poor people, middle class people, rich people. And I’m sorry to say, the token Jew, again represented in a very negative way.

Here you can see that he’s refusing to tip the porter who’s holding out his hand for a tip. Now Courbet was without doubt one of the biggest egos of any great artist. I think, well artists tend to have big egos. Most of the ones I know have quite highly developed egos. But he… With him I think there’s also a heavy dose of narcissism. And that’s certainly comes across in his self portraits, especially the ones early on in his career. In fact, you could say for the first decade or so of his career, he is very much focused on himself and paints a whole series of self portraits, as you can see very beautiful young man before he got his Assyrian beard in a pose and style that what he said in his manifesto that he had looked at the past. He’d learned from the past.

And this is a famous self portrait 16th century portrait by Parmigianino painted in a convex mirror on the right hand side. By the time he got to “The Artist’s Studio”, 1855, he’s discarded Romanticism, the theatrically, the artificiality, the hyper emotion of Romanticism. But here are two early self portraits in a very melodramatic, very, very hyper romantic vein. And this one, which I think is really quite remarkable where he’s painted himself as crazy, as a madman. And the painting on the right hand side shows him with his long term lover. Trying to remember what her name is. It’s in my notes. Can’t remember off the top of my head. I think they were together well for several years. And they had a child.

Two more of these self portraits. Again you can see him learning from the art of the past. That’s Rembrandt on the right hand side. There are plenty of Rembrandts for him to study in the Louvre, so I think he spent a lot of time in the Louvre, probably copying pictures in order to learn from them. So Dutch painting has a big influence on him as does Spanish painting like this one from Ribera on the right hand side, with its wet in wet painting. Very, very direct painting. Courbet on the left, Ribera on the right. This painting is called “Self Portrait: The Wounded Man.” And this is Courbet seeing himself as a victim. As a martyr.

The insert here is a painting by Gauguin, which has the inscription pray to Golgotha so he’s actually really comparing himself to the martyrdom of Jesus Christ. So these two artists in personality actually many similarities between Courbet and Gauguin being hugely, hugely egotistical and self obsessed and seeing themselves as martyrs of both as rebels and martyrs of society. This picture, the Courbet, “Wounded Man” has a quite interesting evolution. Because it didn’t start out this way at all. We know from x-rays and preparatory drawings that it was actually a painting of Courbet embracing his mistress.

But after many years together and despite their child he refused to marry her. And she wanted to be married. She wanted the security of marriage. So she married somebody else. And he felt terribly betrayed by this so he painted her out of the picture. And he painted the blood stain. And instead of having a gentle snooze he’s now the victim, the wounded man.

This is the most famous of all Courbet’s self portraits. It has the title “Bonjour Monsieur Courbet” and it shows Courbet who’s just arrived by… This is pre-railways of course, just pre-railways. So he’s arrived by stagecoach. And you can see the coach trundling off in the distance. And he’s gone down to the southwest of France to meet his great patron Alfred Bruyas, who bought many paintings from him. So he shows himself really in working class clothing, and obviously with a rucksack or stuff carried on his back and his hat is the hat not of a bourgeois but a working class person. And Monsieur Bruyas and his friend or servant are greeting him, they’re dressed as bourgeois.

We’ve got a very interesting image here of relationship between artist and patron. This is new. This is only really possible since Romanticism. You know you’ve got this key change in the image and the role of the artist at the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th century. And for those of you love music, think difference between Hayden, with his deference toward his aristocratic patrons and so on, and Beethoven who was sort of famously rude and grumpy, and it was the aristocrats who had to defer to him.

So the smaller image here on the right is by an English 18th century artist called Francis Hayman. And it shows the patron with Hayman. And you can analyse this picture in some detail in the sense that Hayman, his clothing, is imitating that of his patron. It’s almost identical. Except that the patron has gold trimmings and the artist has silver trimmings. So he’s aspiring to some kind of respectability but he’s not pushing his luck too far. He’s showing that he’s of an inferior rank really to the patron. And look at the body language.

I mean the patron sitting enthroned in the armchair with his expansive gesture. And look at the body language of the artist which is practically grovelling towards the patron. Very different body language, very different relationship between the artist and the patron in the Courbet. It’s the artist who looks like the lord and the patron and his friend who are deferential to the genius of the artist. And this was much noted and much mocked in the caricatures. See this caricature on the left where Mr. Bruyas and his friend have actually got down on their knees to worship the genius of Courbet. Courbet, so in this picture he’s showing himself as an outsider. And who are the quintessential outsiders in Western culture since the Middle Age is of course the Jews.

And it’s been pointed out that this image of Courbet with carrying stuff on his back and with the staff is actually a cliche image of “le Juif errant”, the Wandering Jew that you find in these popular prints that you see on the left hand side. Oh this a late painting, one of the last self portraits of Courbet. This dates from the mid 1860s. And it shows him greeting the ocean and I wanted to find [Papers Shuffling] how he himself describes this image.

Rather laughably, I think, he says, “The sea’s voice is tremendous but not loud enough to drown the voice of fame crying my name to the entire world.” This is how he interprets this image. And I’m not suggesting here that he knew Caspar David Friedrich, highly unlikely, Friedrich was a totally forgotten figure even in Germany and certainly outside of Germany. But the parallels between the images of the “Monk by the Sea” and self portrait of Courbet are really quite interesting. With this, you know, both of them doing without standard, conventional framing motifs giving you the sense of infinity.

Right about this time in the mid to late 1860s Courbet went through a phase where he very close in friendship to Whistler. They fell out later as I shall explain to you because Courbet poached Whistler’s Irish girlfriend. But so this is Whistler’s version of Courbet by the sea. 'Cause by the 60s Courbet had put on a lot of weight. So I suspect that Whistler was a great deal more truthful in his image of the artist seen from behind than the Courbet. So going back to the beginning of his… He has a quite a long apprenticeship really in the 1840s and this is the first painting where you can see he really hits his stride.

His first major and really controversial work, called “After Dinner at Ornans.” Again it’s got a self portrait you can see on the other side of the table. And it shows Courbet and his friends in an inn at Ornans. And you may think “Well, what’s so new? What’s so revolutionary?” You know there are plenty of earlier paintings 17th, 18th century paintings that show convivial dinners, everyday life. Genre paintings in the 17th and he 18th century. What was different about this was actually the scale was much bigger than any 17th or 18th century genre scene would be. And it’s got a kind of solemnity and even monumentality.

So a lot of critics were quite outraged they said how dare he present blowup a little genre scene and present it to us as this kind of major work at the Salon. And so it’s a work which certainly looks forward to Van Gogh. Van Gogh, an artist who admired Courbet very much, would’ve known this work, his famous “Potato Eaters.” So there’s something like 40 years between these two pictures. Also looks back, and on top here is Le Nain, one of the Le Nain brothers, there were three Le Nain brothers. And this is probably Louis. But we don’t know for sure. But they were just…

I was talking last time about how Vermeer was rediscovered just at the point where people were interested in the same things. The way he seemed modern and relevant. And it was the same with Le Nain brothers, who painted genre scenes that were not humorous. They have a kind of solemnity and even a monumental quality to them. So the Le Nain brothers were rediscovered, in fact, by Courbet’s friend and friendly critic Champfleury was the person who brought the Le Nain brothers back to the attention of the French public.

Now we move onto a picture which has literally became in inverted commas iconic. It’s like an icon. This dates from, I think it’s 1850? From my list that I gave you. Yeah, 1850. And you’ve just had the 1848 revolutions. You know, the spectre of left-wing revolution is very much in the air at the time. A sense of workers arise, you have nothing to lose but your chains. So this was a provocative picture to send to the Salon. Big, monumental picture of workers. And these workers, stone breakers, was the hardest, toughest work you could possibly do, for an absolute minimal wage in the middle of the 19th century. Stone breakers didn’t expect to live long, the work was so hard.

This is by an English Pre-Raphaelite artist, Wallis, and it shows the death of a stone worker. And this painted around the same time. Stone workers were really symbolic of the toughest kind of working-class life. And here, next on Wednesday, I’m going to be talking about Millet and Daumier, who are two other artists who are said to belong to the Realist movement and who are also painting members of the lower classes, and painting them on a monumental scale. And the painting on the left “The Winnower” was really the first major work by Jean-François Millet that was in the summer of 1848.

So two years earlier than the Courbet. Both pictures showing almost sculptural, monumental depiction of a worker. Another, this is a huge picture, again very controversial at the time. “Funeral a'Ornans,” it’s a depiction of the funeral of Courbet’s grandfather. And again what was shocking to the critics, well two things. One was that you’ve got this huge picture filled with many people just sort of standing around as people might at funeral. They haven’t been arranged into graceful poses. They haven’t been grouped to make a nice, satisfying composition as you see in this very famous academic painting “Romans of the Decadence” that I will be talking about in a week or so, maybe two weeks time, by Thomas Couture.

That was the star painting in the Salon of 1847. Won a gold medal, medal was bought by the state. So that’s what people wanted from a big picture. So this picture painted a couple years later people complained also, the other thing people complained about was, “Oh, this is a friend’s house” that some people have suggested could have inspired the composition. It’s the ugliness of… People were always complaining that Courbet painted ugly people.

Somebody once said to him, “Why do you have to paint ugly working class middle class people? Why can’t you paint an angel?” Courbet said, “Oh fine. I’ll paint one. Just bring one to my studio.” On the right hand side you’ve got the Dormier caricature mocking the people. The kind of ugly bourgeois people who went to the Salon, who wanted to see pretty pictures and angels. And someone is saying, “Oh, Courbet makes people look too ugly and vulgar. There’s nobody in the world as ugly as that,” says the very ugly bourgeois man.

I’m going to move on here. Of course, I hadn’t really… There’s so many things to talk about today, I’m not really going to talk about his landscapes, which can be very beautiful. Especially the ones inspired by the area around his native Ornans. But I would like just to talk a little bit about technique which you can see very clearly in the landscape. But he’s moving away from the smooth blandness of Neoclassicism or even the suavity of a romantic painter like Delacroix. So the paint is very densely applied, and I think he’s the first major artist to actually apply paint not with a brush but with a palette knife, it’s like a little trowel that you use to scrape the paint off, that’s meant to be for scraping the paint off the palette at the end of the day, but he literally trowels the paint onto surface.

This is one of the most influential aspects, I would say of his work and it’s picked up by Cézanne. Cézanne, top left where you can see even in the small image I think you can see the use of the palette knife. How the paint has been sort of troweled onto the surface in comparison Courbet on the right hand side. Here is a Monsieur Proudhon, famous for his declaration, “Property is theft!” with his daughters. But I’m actually not going to talk about this picture. I just wanted you to see what he looks like 'cause I’m going to quote him in a minute.

Now, this was another scandal 'cause this is what you wanted in a way at the Salon. You wanted to be noticed, you wanted to be discussed, and this picture called “Les Baigneuses,” was exhibited at the Salon of 1853. And there are accounts of people gathering around angrily threatening to attack it because they thought it was so ugly and even Delacroix writes… There’s a long passage in the Delacroix journal about this picture. And Delacroix was by no means hostile to Courbet in general. I mean he really thought Courbet was very gifted but he really was horrified by this picture and by the ugliness of the nude, this very fat nude.

But what really upset Delacroix more than anything else, was what he saw as the “Pointlessness of the gestures of the two women.” The apparently rather theatrical gestures that had no meaning or no expressive purpose. On the preview of the Salon… Oh, you can see caricature over here. The emperor and the empress as you knew, were taken around privately. The star picture of the 1853 Salon was this painting of a horse fair by Rosa Bonheur. This was no doubt the most successful, the most famous painting by woman artist in the whole of the 19th century. It was a huge, huge success, won a gold medal.

And so when they were taken around, the Empress commented on the chunky proportions of the horses, and it was explained her, “Well, these horses are cart horses from the region of and that’s what they look like. And then she moved on and she was shown the Courbet, and she explained with horror, "Oh my god! Did his female models come from the same area of France?” The Young Girls Beside the Seine. Now before I tell you anything about this. It probably looks to you a very charming, very innocent scene and I think with a lot of 19th century pictures, it’s quite hard for people today to read them. But what we have here actually is an image of two prostitutes. And that would be completely evident to any viewer at the Salon in the 19th century.

A clue is that you have a gentleman’s hat in the boat, but also the fact that the women are semi undressed, specifically, one in the foreground and lying on the grass. I mean no respectable woman would be out in a public area in a half naked state lying on the grass. So, we know they’re prostitutes. And gives us a very interesting analysis of this. He says that, “The brunette in the foreground lies full length on the grass, pressing her burning bosom to the ground, her half closed eyes are veiled in erotic reverie. Flee if you’re not want this to turn you into a beast.” But he says the other one, the blonde one in the background.

He says, “She too indulges in fancies, not of love, but of cold ambition. She understands business, she owns shares, and has money in the funds.” So there’s also, I think in this picture, a hint of a lesbian relationship. It was very widely believed in the 19th century, I mean, Paris was the prostitution capital of the world and was a pleasure capital of the world. And there were these guides in English for American British visitors to Paris for the pretty women of Paris, the women who are available and detailed descriptions of them.

And very, very often these descriptions emphasised their lesbianism. And who knows whether this was true or not. Maybe, it’d be very understandable. I imagine if you’re a prostitute, you see the worst side of the male sex, you might prefer your own sex. But also I think it was a male fantasy of the period and it’s certainly a fantasy that entertained Courbet. This picture doesn’t exist anymore, like The Stone Breakers. I forgot to mention that, that was destroyed in the Second World War.

And so is this picture of Vénus and Psyché. And it’s full of clues that actually this is an erotic scene the fact that she’s holding up this parrot with its beak which has some phallic and sexual connotations and people understood it as such at the time. It was rejected from the Paris Salon and actually shown in Brussels. And there it was seen by a very interesting Turkish, Pasha. Fascinating character called Khalil Pasha. There you see his picture, very wealthy man. He’s like a character really out of a opera. He arrived in Paris with a tonne of money who proceeded to lose it all, and gambled it away.

But in the meantime, he also built up a collection of erotic pictures. And he approached Courbet and said he wanted a replica of the Vénus and Psyché. And Courbet said, “No, I don’t want to paint a replica. I’m going to paint you another picture and it’s going to be called "Afterwards.” And it’s this picture, which is now called “Le Sommeil,” sleep. And it’s a painting of two women, naked women embrace presumably after having had sex. And also I had some scruples but including this, but Wendy has given me the go ahead. I know it’s a controversial picture. This was also painted for Pasha Khalil and it’s now in the Musée d'Orsay. And I read that it sells more postcards than any other painting in the museum.

It had a very interesting history I mean after his bankruptcy, it went through various other owners. It was actually stolen by the Russians during the Second World War and retrieved by its Hungarian owner afterwards. And then it was owned by the famous philosopher, Lacan, and after his death was acquired by the Bourse. And I will briefly, anyway, show you a closer picture of the image. I personally don’t find it in any way… I find it far less offensive actually than most of this other nudes. I mean it’s direct, it’s honest, it’s what it is. I think it was something you couldn’t possibly have been shown in public in the 19th century. The acknowledgment that women had pubic hair which was a kind of secret of male voluptuaries the 19th century. You find a lot of discussion of women’s pubic hair in these sex guides to Paris that I mentioned to you.

But of course famously Ruskin when he married, he claimed that he’d didn’t know that women had pubic hair 'cause he’d seen nudes that didn’t include it. There’s a big discussion about whether the painting was intended to be like that from the start or whether it was actually cut down. And there is this fragment by Courbet, and there are some people, it’s very much debated, who think that this head originally belonged to the body of the painting called “The Origin of the World” I’ve just been discussing. I mean this painting to me, this is a much, much more and sleazy image than “The Origin of the World.” This was sent to the Salon, and this was fine because it it followed the conventions, you could be as erotic as you like, you could you could be as sleazy as you like, you could have as many double entendres in the painting as you like, but you had to follow certain conventions.

This is again a very erotic image. And once again you’ve got the phallic symbolism of this biting creature with its beak. This is not particularly 19th century. This is something it goes way back, images of Cleopatra with her serpent, or this little Caravaggio of “Boy Bitten by a Lizard” that have these kind of erotic connotations. And so this is 1866 and I think this is called a quite scenically setting out to paint a kind of Salon nude similar to the Cabanel “Birth of Venus” you see here at the top, which was the star picture of Salon of 1863, won the gold medal and so on. And he also think probably wanted a little bit of a succès de scandale. He would be very familiar with this sculpture which was posed for by Madame Sabatier. I mean, it’s obviously a woman writhing with sexual ecstasy but you can’t see here that there’s a snake and give it the title, “Femme piquée par un serpent,” “Woman Bitten by a Snake” and you’re okay.

But even so, this is Clésinger, sculptor Clésinger, I’ll talk about him in a week or so. And he’s I suppose, you wanted to push the boundaries, you wanted to create a bit of discussion and a little bit of scandal. This is the lovely Irish girl, Jo Hiffernan who was Whistler’s mistress until Courbet poached her. And I show you this image because well you can see hair. There are certain triggers for erotic response in the 19th century and hair is one of them, because, obviously, no respectable woman was ever seen by anybody except her husband, or her maid, or her children with her hair down. The hair was always gathered, or constricted in some way.

So, this is an erotic picture and it may remind some of you of Rossetti, who had a similar kind of pulled hair fetishism. So I think this is quite an interesting comparison and they did know one another. Rossetti was introduced to Courbet by Whistler. And Rossetti actually went to Courbet’s on a visit to Paris. So, presumably Courbet also knew something about Rossetti’s work. This is the dire end of… I think Courbet was in some ways, a naive man and a very foolish man, and he took great risks during the Paris Commune. Paris Commune 1871, it was a proto communist revolution in Paris. Very, very brutally put down by the government with massacres in the streets. But it was great brutality on both sides, I think one has to say in the Paris Commune.

And Courbet was associated with the destruction of a hated symbol of the Bonapartist regime, which was the Vendome Column. And he’s somewhere in this photograph, I can’t point him out to you but he is. He actually helped with the destruction of the column, having himself photographed with it. Very topical, isn’t it. Bringing down statues, it’s not a new thing. And so when the Commune was suppressed, he was imprisoned, he was put on trial. This is a self-portrait he made in prison and a still life, it’s now in London, in a national gallery, that he painted while he was in prison.

And he again very foolishly said, “Well, if you can prove that I had anything to do with the destruction of the Vendome Column, I’ll pay for it.” And they could prove it and they did ask him to pay for it. So he actually well couldn’t possibly. So he had to flee to Switzerland, and he spent the last few years of his life in poverty in Switzerland, painting really, awful things like this. And it looks like the worst… If you saw this against the railings in Bayswater Road I don’t think you give it a second glance. Sad to see a great artist reduced to this.

Anyway, I’m finished, but I have one more image I’m going to torment you now. This is my lunch menu from Friday at La Fresque and it was really delicious. As you can see, well, very religious people might not be too happy 'cause there is an awful lot of on these menus. But there’s wonderful fish. The fish is always super fresh. That’s what I ate on Friday. I had the . It’s absolutely exquisite and delicious. And so I’m just waving this in front of you like a mirage for when all this pandemic thing is over so that you can come to Paris and have some lovely meals.

Right, I’m going to come out now and see what questions we have.

Q&A and Comments

Q: “Where was the huge buildings situated in ?” A: All the Paris world exhibitions 1855, '67, '78. '89, '1937, they were all in the same place. The area where the Eiffel Tower now is, on the west of Central Paris.

“Cautious Courbet.” I’m sorry, that message means. “Picasso’s nice quote. Picasso said it took him 90 years to paint like a child.” Some great quotes from a Picasso of course.

Q: “Who’s the creature crouching lying on the floor to the right?” A: I’m not quite sure, I’d have another look.

Q: “Could an element of Courbet’s depiction of the Jew be a left-wing criticism of those Jews stuck in tradition?” A: It could be. Actually that strikes me because of the way he’s depicted. Yes, I think that is actually an interesting idea. I would certainly go with that especially because he’s clutching is little box and so on is depicted next to the priest. And there’s no doubt that the meaning you attribute here to the depiction of the Jew, is also, the meaning of depiction of the priest. So I think that is actually a very likely explanation.

“Sometimes the only available model is the artists themselves.” That is true. It’s also true very often 'cause women artists who find it more difficult, or used to finding more difficult to… And it’s true that artists often produce a lot of self portraits at the beginning of their career when models are less available to them. But I think with with Courbet, the self-loved narcissism, it just is so evident really in the images.

Somebody saying, “I have a painting by Naondo Nakamura of a woman and a cat portrait, star both facing forward.” Yes, there have been quite a few paintings of women with cats. I mean it’s a long tradition. I’m not going to do it, but you could do a whole lecture on it.

This is Karen saying, “I sat under the magnificent professor Linda Nochlin of course her book on realism is the standard book.” Yes, read her book on realism, absolutely. I mean that was a book I read as an undergraduate so I suppose it completely formed my ideas on realism. I’ve done one on Angera actually not that long ago Linda. And I really really love Angera. I don’t usually need asking twice to talk about him.

Q: “What was Courbet’s influence on and relationship with impressions?“ A: He had a very big influence on early Pissarro. Pissarro’s work in 1860s, and less I would say on the others.

Q: "Can naive and foolish people create art?” A: Oh yeah absolutely, absolutely. Well, not that I think it’s a gospel truth but think about the play “Amadeus” which is really all about that.

“Can’t read the menu.” Oh, sorry, sorry. But anyway, I’ll tell you what you can do. La Fresque, actually have a website and you can go on it, and you can read their menu every day if you really want to torment yourself.

Yes, it is, you’re right. That is the Château des Vigiers, on Lake Geneva. And that’s it, I think. And yes, lots of people who asked me about it. I thought, what I’m going to do, I’m going to have a little break after the next few lectures, because I think it’s quite nice to do something different. And I thought I’d do three lectures, really, connected with collecting in Paris. And one will be a talk about all the stuff in this flat that I’ve managed to collect over the past five years. It will be more encouragement for you to come here and spend lots of money. And yes, La Fresque, as in, no, F-R-E-S-Q-U-E.

Q: “Was he successful?” A: Yes, I think he was quite successful. I mean as I said he had a very wealthy patron in Monsieur Bruyas. But on the other hand, I don’t think he sold the big pictures. They still belonged to him when he died.

This is Sharon saying, “I’ve always loved Courbet’s strong paintings The Workers, and had hoped he was a champion.” I think he was just some extent, although probably less than somehow he’s being made out to be. Well, I don’t know. From my lecture, I don’t want to condemn him. Certainly he was egoistical and in some ways, I think he was probably… And people liked him, people loved him. So he certainly had his warm and cuddly side, right? And don’t let me put you off, I don’t want anybody to be put off anything by anything I say. And you’re very, very welcome to completely take it with a big shovel full of salt.

“ Part of haddock family.” Thank you, I didn’t really know what it was, but it was extremely tasty. Yes. Do try it.

• Thank you, Patrick. That was another outstanding presentation.

• Thank you, Wendy.

• Thank you. Thank you. So happy 4th of July to everybody there, and Patrick brilliant. I’m going to call you right now.

• All right good.

• I want to thank you myself. For the recommendation of those beautiful, beautiful posters. So, thank you, everybody. Thanks for joining us. Enjoy the rest of your day or your evening. Take care.

• [Patrick] Yeah. Bye, bye.

• [Wendy] Thanks, bye bye.