Sharjah: Othman Hassan
Jean-Désiré Gustave Courbet (1819 – 1877) was a French painter who led the realist movement in the nineteenth century. Born to a farmer father, Gustave went to study law in Paris in 1840, but he soon left his studies to study fine arts, which greatly interested him. He began learning drawing through free drawing in Switzerland, where he would draw models and drawings representing nature. He also visited… Louvre Museum to imitate works of art in the museum. He displayed his works in a number of art salons, some of which were met with approval by the art audience, and others were rejected, such as his painting called (Humac) because of the rigid, emotionless style that dominates the painting.
The great artist Delacroix described Courbet’s painting (After Dinner at Ornan) as a revolutionary work. Fortunately for Courbet, he lived during a time of modernist influence in France. He had many friendships with writers, philosophers, and poets. Among them: Charles Baudelaire, Proudhon and Chanfleury had a great influence on changing his artistic path, especially the latter who was the first to give the name realism in plastic art, a style that was later developed by Courbet and was evident in most of his works, so much so that he would recommend to his young artists to convey what they saw in a way Honest in their work without exaggeration.
Courbet painted many realistic paintings inspired by the harsh snow scenes of the countryside in the region in which he lived, including “Dog Companions” and “The Village Poor.”
“The Village Poor” is one of Gustave Courbet’s paintings that, along with many other paintings, embodies his concept of realism. Courbet painted it in 1866. The Frenchman Paul Cézanne described it as representing a work completed in an elegant and beautiful manner, and aims to combine several themes important to Courbet’s artistic vision. It is One of the paintings that embodies poverty and the rural world in the Franche-Comté region (the artist’s home region), which is a vision that resembles the “realism of misery” or “the misery of reality” in rural life as closely experienced by Gustave Courbet.
The work shows three characters (a mother, her daughter, and the goat). This work is sometimes called “The Woman with the Goats.” The pictorial scene shows a woman bending under the weight of a bundle of branches that she carries with one hand on her back, while the other hand is busy pulling a stray goat. A woman’s body bent forward expresses fatigue and exhaustion. In front of her walks a little girl, proudly carrying a large loaf of bread in her arms. The position of the child girl walking quickly in contrast to her mother’s lumbering gait could indicate a real traumatic situation that Courbet reacted to and was struck by.
The painting highlights a vast landscape completely covered with snow that surrounds the three figures of the work. Courbet played on the contrast of colors in this painting, as we see it from the sunset light coming from the right towards that white space that floods the painting, with clear differences from the intersection of light and shadows in the spaces. Scattered here and there throughout the landscape, this is with attention to the path taken by the three characters, which is a path invaded by long and disturbing twilight lines that herald a cloudy sky, a clear indication of what threatens the characters if the mother and daughter do not hurry to reach their destination, i.e. “home.” .
After analyzing the work’s figurative structure, critics believe that the artist Gustave Courbet has created a wonderful winter landscape, with a great pictorial presence. Here, the dual color, or the intersection or contrast between black and white, gives the painting a charming and timeless look in Courbet’s works.
The realism of the artist Courbet sparked a major break with the academic tradition that was keen to present poetic paintings filled with drama and colours. He was very careful in his understanding of realistic art, an understanding that was evident in many of his life and personal situations. He could never betray his principles that conflicted with his understanding of modernity. It is a special kind of modernity capable of unraveling the knots and symbols of people who were living in harsh and painful rural environments.
This advanced intellectual awareness made Courbet align himself with great thinkers in their existential vision. He saw the world as it really was, and made drawing the mission of his life. Existence was the main source that inspired him in producing his works. He adopted guiding concepts from which he could not escape.
