Page 30 - Courbet

Fear to 1848, a few years later than its conventional date of 1844-46. He gives it a new title, calling it Suicide,
Landscape of 1848, corresponding to a picture Courbet listed at his 1855 Realism exhibition.38 Given that
Courbet left it unfinished, unlike any other of his self-portraits, it was probably a sketch for the Man Delivered
from Love that was first painted over the Walpurgis Night.

Just after it disappeared under The Bathers, Man Delivered from Love was described by the criticThéophile Silvestre
in an interview with the newly famous Courbet in his studio in 1852. He quotes Courbet as having decided to
give up his early loves:

‘It was time to bury those amorous follies. I resolved to kill off the woman who tormented my imagination;
… instead of turning towards suicide, I pitilessly sacrificed her in a grand allegorical painting: Man Delivered
from Love by Death. Cackling with laughter, Death carries her off, a woman whose sorry lover (portrait of
Courbet) tries to fight him for her. Soon the idea of this painting seemed false, and I erased it. I told myself:
why hate women? It’s the ignorance and egotism of men one should combat… From that moment I became
fully tolerant and thanks to that freedom I was able to integrate the fundamentals of Realism.’39

t

I s it possible to imagine that Courbet’s break with Virginie led to his definitive turn towards Realism? The
truth is that by 1852 Courbet had already made that turn. And yet the association he makes in speaking
to Silvestre may indicate that relations between the two had been precarious for a certain time. The idea
that Courbet had become tolerant is open to interpretation. Perhaps he was tolerant of the concept of sexual
freedom? In any case, the point in relation to Mother and Child on a Hammock is that it bears witness to a stage in
Courbet’s development that he consciously rejected as time went on.And we find evidence that this development
was not due simply to politics or opportunism, but relates also to disillusionment with attitudes he once took
for granted. No longer would there be domestic fantasies; his future relations with women would be primarily
physical. He would hence protect himself from humiliation and compensate for his early vulnerability through
bravado, rhetoric and displays of male dominance that echo the anti-feminism of his political mentor, Proudhon.

Relations between Courbet and Proudhon have been studied and evoked many times in the Courbet literature.

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