Page 28 - Courbet

CHANGING ATTITUDES

T he Revolution of 1848 changed everything for Courbet.The establishment of a left-wing government
conformed to his political inclinations and those of friends such as Baudelaire and Proudhon.34 It
also enabled Courbet to fulfil his artistic aspirations because the 1848 and 1849 Salons were jury
free, meaning that all his submissions would now be accepted.This new artistic liberation and opportunity
meant that Courbet could follow the theories of both these friends more closely, that is to abandon fantasy
for realities one might actually observe. Furthermore, at the Salon of 1849 Courbet won a second class
(silver) medal for The After-Dinner at Ornans (Fig. 24). This award would allow him to bypass future juries,
once they were re-established, for the rest of his career.35

In The After-Dinner, Courbet represented a few of his

friends at home with his father,who sips postprandial eau

de vie while listening to one of their friends, Alphonse

Promayet,playing the violin.It was Courbet’s first step

towards Realism, relying on what is now understood

as the Romantic myth of virtuous rural life. The idea

of the countryside as a place of virtue was then being

propagated in novels by George Sand and Courbet’s

friend and correspondent Champfleury who, besides

being a novelist, also collected folk songs and popular

imagery.The concept of the beneficent countryside is

already present in our painting, Mother and Child on

a Hammock. Set in a timeless natural environment,

represented through the cheerful colours and delicate

Fig. 24. The After-Dinner at Ornans, 1847, Musée des Beaux- handling of Romantic painting, our delightful and
Arts, Lille. uncomplicated image of country love as yet lacks the
down-to-earth-toned palette, everyday simplicity

and large size of The After-Dinner. The latter was a transitional picture however, for with his next series of

paintings Courbet would abandon the residual Romantic aura of nostalgia and Rembrandtesque lighting.With

his depiction of dulling, repetitive labour in The Stonebreakers and the stolid village bourgeois assembled for A

Burial at Ornans, both of which he showed to great controversy at the Salon of 1850-51, he plunged headlong

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