Page 49 - Courbet

Even if these utterances challenging the forces of nature are apocryphal, there is a sense in which they can be
informative. Defiance, ironically, is a form of recognition of the other’s power. One does not defy the weak.
Nor is this the same as the sublime, for the sublime is a vicarious, protected experience of nature. Courbet aims
to engage nature directly, as if to do battle.The energy it takes to produce his paintings is everywhere evident as if
they are traces of that interaction. It is not the slick skill of certain Impressionist paintings. Depictions of Courbet’s
heavy brush and the repeated references to him as a‘worker-painter’ quickly put to rest that assumption, with the
exception of a number of paintings, seascapes in particular, that were certainly made for market.

One description of Courbet in the act of painting
runs especially counter to any notions of chic or
poncif: ‘To see Courbet at work, one would say he
produces paintings as naturally as an apple-tree
produces apples’ claimed his friend Max Buchon. …
‘I have never understood how it is possible to work
with so much power and speed. ... [His works] are
the natural flowering of his personality, within his
family, in the pretty valley of Ornans.’63 Jules Vallès
was less flattering: ‘The most beautiful animal I’ve
ever seen is that holy fellow there.Working like a bull,
but gay as a circus bear cub: a beast of both the field
and the country fair.’64 For Champfleury, Courbet’s
authenticity derived directly from his nature and he Fig. 53. The Sea at Palavas, 1854, Musée Fabre, Montpellier.
compared it to a natural force:
‘Above all Courbet is a born painter: that is to say no one can doubt his robust and powerful worker’s talent:
he intrepidly attacks grand canvases, he may not seduce all eyes, some passages may be neglected or awkward,
but every one of his paintings is painted. … If there is one quality M. Courbet possesses in the highest degree,
it is conviction. One could no more deny him that than deny heat to the sun. He walks in art with a confident
step, he shows with pride where he has come from and where he has arrived.’65

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