Take Home Test 1 Question 1

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Joseph Koza

Histart 394

Professor Howard Lay

Take Home Test 1

Question 1: Courbet’s The Burial at Ornans and The Stonebreakers

The reception received by Courbet’s two most famous works from the combined

Salon of 1850-51, The Stonebreakers and The Burial at Ornans, makes one wonder how

those in charge of the Salon did not immediately reject the two painting at first glance.

There are a multitude of reasons these paintings were deemed extremely controversial,

ranging from: underlying political statements, the subjects, the scale, the tone, the date,

and even the style he uses. But the citation from Michelet’s Le Peuple brings to light the

central motivation of the uproar caused by these two paintings. There were no

connections between the bourgeoisie and the working class at the time. His audience held

their stereotypes about the working class, but those were all derived from the few

occasional glimpses they saw of them. The bourgeoisie were so segregated from the

working class that they allowed their view of them to become almost completely

negative, to the point where they were robbing the lower class of their humanity.

These two paintings marked one of the first times that an artist tried his hardest to

give the lower class the most honest and real representation that he could. It was as if

Courbet was on a mission to act as a defender and a voice for these people. Although the

use of the working class in genre painting is always considered controversial, Courbet

took it to the next level by maintaining a somber tone in these paintings. Those at the

Salon were accustomed to art that was both uplifting and poeticized, but these two

paintings by Courbet made no attempt to do such a thing. The painting that garnered all

the immediate attention at the Salon was The Burial at Ornans. The obvious reason was

due to its grand scale. Not only was Courbet using the working class in a genre painting;

he was doing it on a twenty-foot long canvas. To depict rural people on the same scale as

many historical French masterpieces was unprecedented, and many viewed it as an open

assault on what they believed panting should stand for. Even though the grand scale of

The Burial at Ornans made it the focal point of the discussion, the two pieces

complemented each other in such a way that when coupled together the audience became

even more deeply disturbed.

The worker uprisings of 1848 were still fresh in the memories of the bourgeoisie

and this made Courbet’s depiction of the common man on a grand scale all the more

radical. Some critics made it seem as if Courbet was completely politically motivated and

calling for revolution. It is much easier for the bourgeoisie to contemplate such an event

when they don’t know the cause or the people involved. The reason the grouping together

of these two paintings troubled so many people, was because together they mapped out

the circle of life for the working man. In The Stonebreakers there are only two subjects, a

young man and an old man. These men are not just created from the imagination of

Courbet though; they are the stonebreakers of Ornans, real men with real struggles. The

young man is adorned in tattered clothing and struggles to lift a full and heavy basket of

rocks. The old man is on his knees with his hammer poised precisely over a group of

large stones. The significance of the old man on his knees rests in the notion that he is

tired and worn down from many years of toiling over the stones. Yet even though the man

should be in a state of misery, his face is peaceful and compassionate. He is content with

his life and aware that he will always be in that same position, and when he passes on

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Joseph Koza Histart 394 Professor Howard Lay Take Home Test 1 Question 1: Courbet's The Burial at Ornans and The Stonebreakers The reception received by Courbet's two most famous works from the combined Salon of 1850-51, The Stonebreakers and The Burial at Ornans, makes one wonder how those in charge of the Salon did not immediately reject the two painting at first glance. There are a multitude of reasons these paintings were deemed extremely controversial, ranging from: underlying political statements, the subjects, the scale, the tone, the date, and even the style he uses. But the citation from Michelet's Le Peuple brings to light the central motivation of the uproar caused by these two paintings. There were no connections between the bourgeoisie and the working class at the time. His audience held their stereotypes about the working class, but those were all derived from the few ...
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