Page 24 - Courbet

the serious artist caused by lovelorn daydreaming. It fits, in other words, with the gist of his comment to
Champfleury regarding Virginie’s departure, even though his statement was made much later.

A more likely source in women’s literature might be works by Marceline Desbordes-Valmore.16 Nearly
forgotten now, she was admired both by the public and her literary peers, such as Charles Baudelaire andVictor
Hugo, and she was promoted by the critic Charles-Augustin Sainte-Beuve.17 She was regarded by all of them
as the exception – a woman poet. Her Le Livre des mères et des enfants (1840), features motherhood with tender
stories and verses about children.Although Desbordes lived off and on in Paris, she was originally from Douai
and she spent much of her time with her actor husband ProsperValmore touring the provinces.The association
between the innocence of young families and their country settings is evidenced by neo-Rococo vignettes that
accompanied the republication of her Contes en vers pour les enfants (1840) by Garnier Frères in 1865 (Fig. 19).18
Although these illustrations post-date Courbet’s picture, they are on the same track conceptually. Some of
Desbordes’ poems were publicised in the 1840s by being set to music by the Romantic composer and chanteuse
Pauline Duchambge, for example in her Album musical of 1841. Courbet certainly knew the chansonnier milieu;
during these early years, he even fancied himself a composer of popular songs.19

t

Fig. 20. Eugène Delacroix, Woman with a T he 1840s were a difficult and eventful decade for Courbet
Parrot, 1827, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lyon. overall. He tried working with different teachers, but
he spent more time with artist, writer and philosopher
friends he found more sympathetic.20 One of his favorite haunts
was the Andler Keller, an Alsatian brasserie on the same street (no.
24) as his studio at 32, rue Hautefeuille in the bohemian Saint-
André-des-Arts neighbourhood on the Left Bank.There he met
Baudelaire, the philosopher Marc Trapadoux and, especially,
the social theorist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon whose influence,
as we shall see, would be profound. In terms of Courbet’s art
career, acceptance of his pictures by the Salon jury during the

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