Research - Realism: Gustave Courbet

Gustave Courbet (1819-77)

Courbet was the main exponent of Realism in 19th-century French painting. His work contrasts with the Classicism of Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres and the Romanticism of Eugène Delacroix. He relied on the use of the palette knife to create heavily impastoed surfaces, as if to stress his disdain for the fine finish of academic practice. Courbet was born at Ornans in eastern France and received his early training in Besançon. In Paris from 1840, he studied especially the Dutch and Venetian paintings in the Louvre. He exhibited at the Salon in 1844, but public and official favour later deserted him. His mature works often treat genre subjects on the grand scale of history painting, as in his ambitious painting of his studio. After this was turned down by the Exposition Universelle in 1855, he held a one-man exhibition establishing his position as a Realist. (National Gallery Website)

Gustave Courbet, Burial at Ornans, 1851 Oil on canvas, 3.15 m x 6.6 m

Musée d’Orsay, Paris

 
Analysis of the painting

Content

A Burial at Ornans is a huge, frieze-like portrayal of sombre middle-class citizens at a graveside in Courbet's home town. It generated an explosive reaction among the painter's audience and critics. With few exceptions, viewers react to the work as an assault on the very idea of what a painting should be. With the recent worker uprisings of 1848 , Courbet's use of the “common” people as a grand subject was deemed a radical act -- "the engine of revolution," as one critic said.

Form and process

In his push towards a realistic style, Courbet has intentionally painted his black-clad folk in a manner that does not idealise their suffering. They are real people. The Salon audience is accustomed to paintings that uplift, and they read Courbet's grieving figures as vulgar and ugly. One critic writes, "He paints pictures as you black your boots."

Energy

Courbet wrote that his aims were to "translate the customs, the ideas, the appearance of my epoch according to my own appreciation; in a word, to create living art, that is my goal." Many art historians view Courbet's determination toward artistic freedom as an important rupture with the Salon-controlled painting of the past (grand historical mythological, religious paintings), and an inspiration to the next generation of innovators, the Impressionists. His work does not have the high finish of the usual type of salon paintings of the time, and reflects the subject matter of his genre scenes.

Culture

Courbet was a rebel and bohemian. He was the first painter to sponsor his own, self-financed exhibitions. His support for the poor and oppressed ran contrary to French politics. Near the end of his life, in the 1870s, he was jailed briefly for his association with the Paris Commune.

Relevance to my work.

Realism forms the basis for many movements and styles which are relevant to my approach. It is at the heart of Industrial and Social Realism, for instance, L.S.Lowry, whose work I shall be looking at in future research and posts.

 

Sense of Place - Research: Narrative and Memory

Anselm Kiefer (b. 1945): Narrative, History and Myth

I went to see Kiefer’s exhibition at the Royal Academy in 2014, and have recently re-read the book which accompanied the exhibition, “Anselm Kiefer” (Soriano et al., 2014).

Kiefer hones in on the impact of the aftermath of the war on German soil, interweaving mythology, ancient cultures, and cosmology. He meditates on beliefs and the complex relationship between art and spirituality. Kiefer’s work is extremely thought provoking and powerful.

Anselm Kiefer, Sulamith, 1983, oil, acrylic, emulsion and straw on canvas, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

 The painting was made in 1983. During this period Kiefer was exploring the impact and aftermath of the Second World War on German society. The painting works on a number of different levels. The image reflects a poem and the years his friend and poet, Paul Celan spent in a concentration camp. The building, modelled on Wilhelm Kreis’s Funeral Hall for the Great German Soldiers in Berlin, is transformed by Kiefer into a Holocaust memorial. Kiefer has used his imagination, and built on the story to make the connections between the poem and his image. Kiefer has deliberately provided us with a stark, dark, enclosed space to conjure up the oppressive feelings which must go with imprisonment.

Memory and time

Frank Auerbach (b. 1931)

In a rare interview with Smith on BBC Newsnight (2015) we get an insight into Auerbach’s background, motivation and personality which drive his work, having lost both parents in the Holocaust. Auerbach’s subject matter is confined to those subjects which he gets to know well over time. Over the years he has made hundreds of visits to the National Gallery where he will draw before the works of masters such as Rubens, Rembrandt and Constable. He would then take his drawing back to his studio where he would pin it up and work from it while it was still fresh in his mind, starting anew on each visit. They are not slavish copies, but lively original works.  Sometimes he will transfer compositional elements into another painting, such as his Park Village East, below, loosely based on Constable’s The Hay Wain,1821.

Frank Auerbach, Park Village East, 1997-98

His interest in landscape derives with his fascination of the area of London around Camden, where he has had his studio for over fifty years. He visited London as a child during the war and saw at first hand the bomb damage. When he was a student after the war and during the rebuilding of bombed sites, he would visit these areas on a daily basis and record the transformation. He became “fonder and fonder of it” (Auerbach, 2015). In this way, we can understand the influence time and memory plays on the way Auerbach sees and creates his paintings.

 

David Bomberg

David Bomberg (1890-1925)

Last year I went to see the David Bomberg Exhibition at the Laing Gallery, Newcastle. Bomberg was an innovator, seeking new ways of working and expression, right through from the early days of Cubism. He played with form, light and colour and produced inspiring works about “place” from a number of travels overseas, including Palestine and Spain. Since the exhibition, I have also read MacDougall and Dickson’s Bomberg (2017).

 An example of his good use of tone to capture form and mood is Mount Zion with the Church of the Dormition, 1923, below. The picture is strikingly simple and effective, and executed with energy using strong, fluid brushstrokes.

David Bomberg, Mount Zion with the Church of the Dormition, 1923, oil on canvas, Ben Uri Gallery

I have looked closely at the way Bomberg portrays colour and light. The light in his Palestinian and Spanish landscapes is totally different, but effective in each. For instance, take Bomberg’s ambitious painting, Jerusalem, City and Mount of Ascension, 1925 - the light bounces off the buildings and really gives off the feel of intense heat:

“Here colour itself has become an integral part of the painting’s structure and composition.” (MacDougall and Dickson, 2017 p. 111)

David Bomberg, Jerusalem, City and Mount of Ascension, 1925 oil on canvas, Ferens Art Gallery

In contrast, we see a more colourful, and vibrant depiction of the Spanish light in the painting, The Gorge, Ronda, Spain, 1935:

“Bomberg spins the canvas to capture a breath-taking vertical view, in which the drama of the setting is matched by the gorgeous extravagance of his palette.” (MacDougall and Dickson, 2017 p. 139)

David Bomberg, The Gorge, Ronda, Spain, 1935, Middlesborough Institute of Modern Art

Light, tone, and colour

Light, Tone, and Colour

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571-1610)

Caravaggio was an Italian painter active in Rome, Naples, Malta, and Sicily during the  Baroque period.

Caravaggio is renowned for his realistic observation of the human state and  dramatic use of lighting which was his  dominant stylistic element. His realistic style became hugely influential, and his dramatic chiaroscuro became known as “tenebrism”.  His followers were called the "Caravaggisti" or “tenebrists” ("shadowists"). He used darkened shadows and lit subjects in bright shafts of light, working rapidly, with live models, which is evident from his paintings, and an innovation, especially for religious works. He was also somewhat unusual in that he worked directly onto the canvas (without preparatory drawings). His influence can be seen in the works of Peter Paul Rubens, de Ribera, Bernini, and Rembrandt. In the example below, we see how the strong shaft of light from the left defines and highlights the main participants in the scene, whilst at the same time adding drama with the strong use of dark shadows. 

Caravaggio, Supper at Emmaus, 1601, oil on canvas, National Gallery, London

Jan Vermeer (1632-1675)

Vermeer was a Dutch painter specialising in domestic interior scenes of middle-class life, a provincial genre painter, but evidently not wealthy. He produced relatively few paintings (34 generally attributed to him) as he worked slowly and with great care. He is renowned for his masterly treatment and use of light, but also for his frequent use of very expensive pigments (e.g. ultramarine, made from lapis lazuli). After a period of obscurity, Vermeer is now acknowledged as one of the greatest painters of the Dutch Golden Age.

 

Vermeer, The Milkmaid, (c. 1658)

Claude Monet (1840-1926) Impressionism

In May I saw the Monet and Architecture Exhibition at the National Gallery and in the summer I also went to Paris and visited L’Orangerie, which houses Monet’s Water Lilies Series.

 

Above, photo inside L'Orangerie

 

Key to Impressionism is the way these artists capture the fleeting effects of light, colour and reflections in nature. A characteristic was "plein air" or open-air painting of mainly landscape subjects. The Impressionists were influenced by, and appreciated, the bright colours, high viewpoints and interlocking asymmetrical compositions of Japanese prints. Their techniques included the use of mainly pale grounds, greys, cream, beige and white, with only a thin layer of preparation which left the canvas grain exposed. their work was also characterised by the use of lively brushwork, with textured surfaces which also unify the design. They would drag stiffish paint across the canvas to create ragged, vibrant flickerings of colour with impasted dabs of colour added here and there. Colours slurred together on the surface and they used also wet over dry to let the colour underneath show through. Black was abandoned in favour of opacity. Monet's later works are more “abstract” in that the water lily paintings have no horizon, with the use of repeat subjects and views in different light. The Impressionists would also make use of plain, white or pale tinted frames to set off their paintings better, rather than the ornate, gold frames of the Academy, and the paintings were usually smaller in scale than previous Academy entries, again, breaking with tradition. 

 

Fauvism: Key Period, 1900-1905

  The Fauves exploited pure colour and used, in particular, vibrant reds and greens (closest in tone of all the complementary colours). They used unconventional brushwork, direct with an air of excitement and urgency. They employed fluid and original draughtsmanship with flattened forms, bold simplifications and decorative patterns. Henri Matisse (1869-1954) and Raoul Dufy are examples.

 

 

Henry Matisse, Odalisque a la culotte rouge, 1924-25

 

 

Raoul Dufy, The Wheatfield, 1929

 

Anfam D.A. et al. (1985) Techniques of the Great Masters of Art. New Jersey: Chartwell Books Inc.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The "Fauves" or "Wild Beasts" (Key period from 1900 to 1905)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Fauves exploited pure colour and used, in particular, vibrant reds and greens (closest in tone of all the complementary colours). They used unconventional brushwork, direct with an air of excitement and urgency. They employed fluid and original draughtsmanship with flattened forms, bold simplifications and decorative patterns. Henri Matisse (1869-1954) and Raoul Dufy (1877-1953) are examples.

Anfam D.A. et al. (1985) Techniques of the Great Masters of Art. New Jersey: Chartwell Books Inc.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The "Fauves" or "Wild Beasts" (Key period from 1900 to 1905)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Henri Matisse, Odalisque a la culotte rouge, 1924-25

Raoul Dufy, The Wheatfield, 1929

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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