Washerwomen 1855, MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS, BOSTON, MA, US
Girl Carrying Water 1856, RIJKSMUSEUM, AMSTERDAM, THE NETHERLANDS
The Angelus 1857–9, MUSÉE D’ORSAY, PARIS, FRANCE
The Knitting Lesson 1869, ST LOUIS ART MUSEUM, ST LOUIS, MO, US
COURBET
1819–1877 • REALISM
The Studio of the Painter
1855 OIL ON CANVAS
359 × 598 CM (141¼ × 235 IN)
MUSÉE D’ORSAY, PARIS, FRANCE
Painted for the 1855 Paris Exposition Universelle, this is an allegory of Courbet’s life as a painter with figures used to symbolize his qualities, ideals, loves and hates. Lit from an indefinite source, friends and admirers are shown on the right, and challenges and opposition to the left. The friends include the art critics, Champfleury and Charles Baudelaire, while on the left are figures who represent the principles Courbet rejected.
Frequently categorized as the father of the Realist Movement, Courbet used the term Realist to describe his own work and even issued a manifesto on the subject. As with many artists who broke with artistic conventions, his work was condemned and ridiculed by contemporary critics, but was later hailed by avant-garde artists as revolutionary and influential.
One of the most powerful personalities of 19th-century art, Courbet was born at Ornans in eastern France. He moved to Paris when he was 20, but his country upbringing remained prominent in his art. He trained in and around his home town, but even in Paris, he learned more from viewing the work of artists such as Caravaggio and Velázquez in the Louvre than he did from his teachers. His first works were quite Romantic in concept and often influenced by literary sources, but he soon began focusing on studies of real life.
Between 1841 and 1847, only three of his paintings were accepted by the Salon jury. In 1846 and 1847, he visited the Netherlands and Belgium, where he saw paintings by Rembrandt and other Dutch masters. This increased his resolve to only paint what he saw around him. In 1848, after the Revolution, the Salon was held without a jury. Courbet exhibited ten of his works the following year and won a gold medal, but when three of his 14 submissions were rejected from the Exposition Universelle in 1855, he set up his own pavilion. He called his exhibition “Le Réalisme” and although attendance and sales were low, his positive influence on young avant-garde artists was secured.
Many of Courbet’s works became the object of public derision. Paintings featuring ordinary people were considered inappropriate, as most people favored mythology and idealistic subjects; Courbet declared he could not paint an angel as he had never seen one. Critics also scoffed at his painting technique, with its strong tonal contrasts applied quickly and roughly with a palette knife, resulting in a coarsely textured surface. Again, he maintained that this was more realistic than the smooth finish of academic paintings.
After the abdication of Napoleon III in 1870, Courbet’s republican friends declared him head of the arts commission of the Commune, the interim revolutionary government of Paris. When the Commune was overthrown, he was accused of helping to destroy the Vendôme Column, a monument to Napoleon, and imprisoned for six months. On his release, he was told to pay for the rebuilding of the column. Unable to do so, he fled to Switzerland, where he spent his final years.
Key Works
A Burial at Ornans 1849–50, MUSÉE D’ORSAY, PARIS, FRANCE
The Meeting, or “Bonjour Monsieur Courbet” 1854, MUSÉE FABRE, MONTPELLIER, FRANCE
Young Ladies on the Banks of the Seine BEFORE 1857, NATIONAL GALLERY, LONDON, UK
The Cliff at Etretat after the Storm 1869, MUSÉE D’ORSAY, PARIS, FRANCE
MOREAU
1826–1898 • SYMBOLISM
Orpheus
1866 OIL ON WOOD
154 × 99.5 CM (60 × 39 IN)
MUSEE D’ORSAY, PARIS, FRANCE
In Greek mythology, Orpheus charmed all with his music, but he was killed. His story was a popular Symbolist theme as it shows that an artist lives on through his creations. Here, a girl, adorned with iridescent jewels, holds his severed head on his lyre.
One of the precursors of the Symbolist Movement, French painter Gustave Moreau’s highly distinctive and mystical style was influenced by Romanticism and the great masters of the Renaissance.
Turning away from a world increasingly dominated by science and technology, Parisian-born Moreau developed a distinctive painting method that incorporated a flowing style, symbolic elements and jewel-like details—and explored romantic imagery of myth, history, the Bible and the bizarre and exotic.
The son of an architect, in his teens Moreau trained with the history painter François-Édouard Picot (1786–1868), and from the age of 20, he studied at the École des Beaux-Arts. A great admirer of Romanticism, his early style shows a strong influence of his friend Théodore Chassériau (1819–56) and Delacroix (1798–1863). Gradually, he developed his unique style, building up mysterious, dreamlike images, with thick, smooth paint and intense, rich colors.
After visiting Italy in 1841 and 1857, he began blending elements of the High Renaissance with Romanticism in his work. Focusing on the intellectual content of his themes, his religious, historical and mythological subjects were explored for their underlying meanings and sentiments, featuring both subtle and overt symbolism. His thoughtful observations, imagination, taste for the exotic and interest in the effect of embellished details, often prompted accusations of pretentiousness and his sensitivity to disapproval made him reluctant to exhibit.
For prolonged periods, he refrained from showing his work, but slowly he became appreciated, particularly by intellectuals, and he grew more willing to exhibit. In 1864 he won a medal at the annual Paris Salon, even though he had disdained the Salon in previous years. From that decade, he began creating a more Baroque style, but still depicted unreal worlds of fantasy and the imagination on his canvases, and soon achieved great public acclaim. Although he had some success at the Salon, he had private means so did not need to rely on this. Much of his time was spent in seclusion, but in 1892 he became a professor at the École des Beaux-Arts and proved to be an inspiring teacher, bringing out his students’ individual talents and self-expression, rather than trying to impose his own ideas on them. These students included Marquet and Matisse, and his favorite Rouault, who became the first curator of the Moreau Museum, his house in Paris, which Moreau left to the nation on his death. He was later considered to be a forerunner of Surrealism.
Key Works
Oedipus and the Sphinx 1864, METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART, NEW YORK, US
Jason 1865, MUSÉE D’ORSAY, PARIS, FRANCE
The Apparition c.1874–6, MUSÉE GUSTAVE MOREAU, PARIS, FRANCE
Galatea c.1880, MUSÉE D’ORSAY, PARIS, FRANCE
Hesiod and the Muse 1891, MUSÉE D’ORSAY, PARIS, FRANCE
ROSSETTI
1828–1882 • PRE-RAPHAELITE BROTHERHOOD
La Ghirlandata (The Bower Meadow)
1873 OIL ON CANVAS
115.6 × 87.6 CM (45½ × 35½ IN)
THE GUILDHALL ART GALLERY, LONDON, UK
The various greens of this lush, leafy glade complement the glowing hair of the models, Alexa Wilding and May Morris, while flowers in shades of sapphire and ruby fill the bottom of the canvas and a garland of roses and honeysuckle adorns the harp, which represents music and love.