Page 32 - Courbet
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Fig. 29. TheVillage Maidens, 1851-52,The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NewYork.
In Courbet’s own family context, by contrast, his sisters acted as members of the bourgeoisie. In TheVillage
Maidens (Fig. 29), dressed in contemporary though provincial fashions, they perform an act of charity towards
a little peasant girl. The painting thus defined their social class and concomitant activities as leisurely rather
than labouring. That a woman could be independent could only mean for Courbet that she was free of back-
breaking field or farm work as represented in paintings by Jean-François Millet, but not necessarily of domestic
duties.When Courbet made his Portrait of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and his Daughters (Fig. 30), he painted out the
portrait of Proudhon’s wife Euphrasie, whom he had originally included.When the painting was shown in its
original version, one writer, Paul Mantz, criticised Courbet for showing her as a hunchback.43 Might there
have been other motives, too? Courbet replaced her with a sewing basket, an ironic and quite Proudhonian
comment on her subordinate status. She had been a simple seamstress when Proudhon married her.
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