Page 25 - Courbet

1840s was unpredictable and increasingly
unsuccessful. He attempted a variety of
themes for painting, including a biblical
one, Lot and his Daughters, which, although
it may have held a moral lesson, was
nevertheless a theme of incest accentuated
by the nudity of Courbet’s figures.21
Moreover, Courbet never enrolled at
the École des Beaux-Arts, which was
unopposed at the heart of the academic
system that dominated the Parisian world
of art.

With the refusal of Lot and his Daughters by

the Salon jury of 1844, Courbet seems to

have given up on themes associated with

history painting. Although his nudes had

their ultimate sources in classical exam-

ples, their poses were perpetuated by lat-

er schools, which included the Romantic

painter Delacroix (Fig. 20). The latter, in

addition, popularised non-classical litera-

ture through his lithographs of Goethe’s Fig. 21. The Bathers, 1852-53, Musée Fabre, Montpellier.
Faust mentioned earlier and Shakespeare’s
Hamlet. It seems no accident that Courbet painted an Ophelia22 and, at the Salon of 1848, showed a large
Faustian painting called ClassicalWalpurgis Night.23 Once again abandoning an earlier idea, the latter was soon
painted over, eventually becoming Courbet’s famous The Bathers (Fig. 21), shown at the Salon of 1853.24 I shall

say more about this transformation later.

Along with Lot and his Daughters, the Salon jury of 1844 rejected Self-Portrait with Black Dog. It was mentioned
earlier that The Hammock was refused by the jury of 1845.The same jury rejected a portrait of Urbain Cuenot,
who was one of Courbet’s friends from Ornans, as well as The Draught Players. It accepted, however, Courbet’s

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