Gustave Courbet​​was a French painter, the leading figure of Realism, as the

characteristics and premises of the style are taken from his works.​
●

His work “Burial at Ornans” is one of the major turning points of 19th-century French art.
The subject of the “Burial at Ornans” is a graveside funeral in the cemetery at Ornans. The
painting depicts a moment shortly before the start of the ceremony.●
The ​pallbearers​are approaching the scene full of the mourners walking slowly in a
procession towards the grave.
It treats an ordinary provincial funeral with unflattering realism, and on the giant scale
traditionally reserved for the heroic or religious scenes of history painting.●
This work caused great scandal as it was showing the reality of the villagers and ordinary
townspeople, which Courbet was impartially analyzing and describing with the precision of a
journalist. ●
The Royal Academy supported the belief that art should be​instructive, morally uplifting,
and inspired ​by the classical ​tradition​.●
However, the young artists creating in 19th-century didn’t want to keep looking back at the
past.●
The world was changing rapidly​and some artists wanted their work to be ​ about their
contemporary environment​—about themselves and t​ heir own perceptions of life.​In
short, they believed that the modern era ​ deserved​to have a ​modern​art. ●

The aim​of this 19th century artistic movement was to represent the world as it is, describe
nature and life without idealization and with great attention to detail, moving away from
romantic inspiration with imagination,
resignation from the academic idealization of the painting subject, presenting mundane
matters, bringing attention to the lives of ordinary people, their work and problems, and
simplifying the composition of the canvas by​ giving up ornaments, exaggerated vivid
colors and radiant lighting. ​●

Nothing is more realistic than Courbet's words: ​

"Show me an angel, and I’ll paint one”

He promoted painting from nature, painting what the eye sees and only what the eye can
see.
He emphasized the material durability of forms, their tangibility and importance, wanted to
prove that their existence is independent of the artist's actions. ●

The Realism came to life after the ​French Revolution​of ​ 1848​that ended the monarchy. It
was then when more and more painters started turning their backs on ​ romanticism​and
academism. ​Then Courbet ​assumed​​ informal​​leadership​over a group of these artists.
The realists​​began​​to appreciate more figures of labor, workers, and showing them in a
newfound ​Nobel​and ​heroic​manner●

The painting "After dinner at Ornans” is an ​

Academy-acclaimed example of realistic
painting.​The canvas is ​life sized​and combines a ​strongly rural atmosphere​with a ​
touch
of wilful sentimentality​. It earned Courbet a ​
gold medal in 1849,​which meant that he no
longer needed to submit his paintings to the Salon jury.
This is the first painting in which Courbet announced his way of presenting​particular
observations​of provincial life on a ​scale​and with a ​
sense of importance ​ same to that of
academic history painting.​●

“Burial at Ornans” is where the Academical praise ended.

This was a painting that ​expressed​what Courbet thought painting should truly be. From
Academical point of view, large paintings were supposed to be ​
historical, heroic,
allegorical or religious​. ●

This was a ​genre​painting, showing the everyday life, and according to the rules of the
Academy it had ​no business​being on a canvas this large. Everything about the scenery
was ordinary at the time●

- ​the funeral, the figures and the place ​ but Courbet submitted it as a historical painting,
probably bearing in mind the future generations that will look at it eventually. he maintained
that the only possible source for living art is the artist's own experience. Courbet wanted to
paint his own day, his own time.

He said -

„An epoch can only be reproduced by its own artists… I hold the artists of one
century basically incapable of reproducing the aspect of a past or future century.”

So he ​painted his own world​, the one he grew up in. In fact, these are each individual
portraits​, many of them members of Courbet's ​
family​.●

This scene ​allegedly​depicts the ​burial​of his ​great uncle,​ however it’s far from certain.
There’s a possibility that Courbet had ​ no specific person ​ in mind. Surely by submitting this
work to the jury of the salon - that was responsible of deciding which paintings could be hung
in the great official exhibition - and not saying the name of the person that's being buried he
was making a strong ​statement​.
In addition, the title of the picture says ​
"A"​burial not "​
The"​burial, thus reinforcing the
mundane​character of this burial even further.
Usually depiction of such event would have to be of a well known, ​ influential​person to be
presented on a canvas this size, but here, the buried person was a simple man.●

The composition;
The Burial has an additive mode of composition, that is a composition based on a simple
juxtaposition of elements placed alongside one another with no “internal” connections or
interactions between them.●

Such a mode of composition tends to give equal ​ significance​to all portions of the canvas.
Linda Nochlin calls it “pictorial democracy”.
This kind of additive composition is especially suited to convey an impression of the random
structures of the everyday life.●
The masterpiece can be divided roughly into three groups. The pallbearers carrying the
coffin in from the left, in front of the coffin we can see the priest, going towards the centre -
the town's officials, and to their right - women mourning. ​​The faces and poses of these
figures were not idealised.
Courbet has created a horizontal frieze that contrasts to a widely used vertical orientation of
the canvas seen in Renaissance paintings, where a dying figure would be assumed into
heaven. There would be angels, the clouds parting where we would see the possibility for
redemption. (El Greco, The burial of the Count the Orgaz, 1586-88)●

In Courbet painting, the divine is represented by a crucifix carried by one of the clergymen.
The only sense of the divine is purely physical. ●

The middle​of the composition is occupied by a ​ grave​but also by the ​gravedigger​ ,

kneeling on one knee right by it. Courbet gives this simple labor a kind dignity that is
completely unexpected and shocking in mid-19th-century painting. ●

The part of the painting that probably

stands out the most is the hunting dog. A painting traditionally composed for the Salon would
never allow a dog to be represented unless it had a symbolic function. It seems as this dog
just wandered by and entered the scene accidentally, and that way became an emblem of
the authenticity of the represented experience.●
Also, when we look at the side where the people are mourning - some of them are shown in
a deep stage of lamentation, but some are distracted. They don’t indulge in any dramatic
gestures of grief, or other emotion which could suggest any nobility of character. Several
mourners appear more like caricatures, as if the artist was making a v​ irtue​out of ​ugliness​.
●

There's a ​lack of focal point​, no place where our eye is drawn in particular. That gives us
the sense of the usual distractions of life, even at a Funeral, the event that marks the death,
the end of life of a member of a beloved family. This is a part of the realities that intrude the
everyday life.

“You are level with the mourners. You look around, at one face and another: some glances
are comic, as your eye is caught by the red nose and grimacing features of an official, or at
other moments the sadness of an unknown face haunts you. But the point is, you don't really
know where to look. You can't make a true, reassuring connection with anyone. Who, you
think miserably, are these people? They are overwhelming. There are so many of them. And
finally it hits you: this is the first painting in history of a crowd.”

Looking back at the multitudes from the European tradition, with its heritage of ancient Greek
and Roman sculptures, the masses of people are organised, researched and staged. ●

The contrast becomes very clear when we look at The Raft of the Medusa by Théodore
Géricault from 1819 and see the clear pyramid of people, climbing on each other desperately
trying to catch the ships attention. Although it could be considered a journalist painting at the
time, as it depicts the true event from the year it was painted in, the whole scene is not
Realistic. Theres dramaturgy, tension, artificial enhancement of gesture.●

The Burial is so natural, that:

“To feel awkward in front of this painting is simply to feel like one of that crowd - looking at
your neighbours and seeing strangers whom you know nothing about. It is an epiphany of
alienation”

Similarly to Jonathan Jones, Charles Rosen and Henri Zerner said that the viewer of the
Burial “is entirely occupied by the aggressive presence of the personages (…) A genre
scene is raised by this aggression and by the life sine of the figures to the dignity of a history
painting.“

While it is widely assumed that the politics of the time had a big influence on Courbet’s
works,
T.J. Clark​argues: “Courbet was not a painter of conflict or even of movement. He gave us
images of a massive and stifling stillness, images which exposed the structure of his society
rather than its disruption”
But the Paris that had been uplifted and and did not want to accept the fact that ordinary
peasants were painted in such a big picture, in natural proportions and hanged on the "holy"
walls of the Salon - that raised their rank dangerously - and that the city authorities were
afraid of a possible peasant revolution especially since times were politically and socially
tense.

For Michael Fried however, One thing is clear -“the prime subject-matter of Couberts realism
was at this point the social material of rural France, it’s shifts and ambiguities, its total
structure.”
He also talked about After Dinner and Stonebreakers