SYMHC Classics: Gustave Courbet

This 2022 episode covers how Courbet was iconic even in his own lifetime. He flew in the face of artistic convention, ushered in a new movement of Realism in France, and became embroiled in the country’s political turmoil. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 1:38Holly Frey?

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• 2:12Holly Frey?

  Happy Saturday. Since this week's episodes on Peter Kropotkin brought up the Paris Commune, we've picked today's classic with that as a connecting point. We are talking about French artist Gustave Courbet.

• 2:25Tracy V. Wilson?

  At the start of this episode, we talk about whether I had watched What We Do in the Shadows, and I can now update my answer to yes, I have watched all of it.

• 2:34Holly Frey?

  Oh, so good. This originally came out July 25, 2022. Enjoy.

• 2:42Holly Frey?

  Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio.

• 2:53Holly Frey?

  Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Frey.

• 2:56Tracy V. Wilson?

  And I'm Tracy V. Wilson.

• 2:58Holly Frey?

  Tracy, I don't know why I've never asked you this before. Do you watch What We Do in the Shadows?

• 3:02Tracy V. Wilson?

  I intend to watch What We Do in the Shadows. There's just too much. There's too much stuff to watch right now.

• 3:08Holly Frey?

  There is way too much. I won't shade anybody ever for not keeping up with something because who can? I'm scared of the person that keeps up with everything. But the opening credits of What We Do in the Shadows has a series of amazing spoofs of famous and not so famous pieces of art with the characters from the show painted into them as though they have been around for hundreds and hundreds of years because they are vampires.

• 3:38Holly Frey?

  Almost every piece of art, we'll talk about some variations, is actually based on an existing piece of art. Art, art, art. It's such good stuff. Two of those pieces are based on the work of Gustave Courbet. I really have wanted to talk about him anyway, and that was a good entree because I love that show. It is just starting its fourth season, I think, as we publish this episode. It should be out already, and it's so fun. Obviously, not for all ages. It's a very grown up show, but with adult themes. Similarly, this episode, I will warn you, at one point, we are going to talk about a painting that is pretty graphic and explicit.

• 4:23Holly Frey?

  If you have younger art historians or art enthusiasts with you, I mean, you might want to preview it just for safety. I don't know how you feel about it. Everybody's got a different threshold. But Corbeille was iconic, even in his own lifetime. He flew in the face of artistic convention. He turned down awards. He ushered in a new movement of realism in France. He was kind of like the bad boy of mid 19th century Paris art scene. And he also became embroiled in the country's political turmoil. So that is who we are talking about today.

• 4:58Tracy V. Wilson?

  Jean Dessereet Gustave Corbeille was born on June 10, 1819, in the small town of Orneaux, France. This is in the east of France, not far from the border with Switzerland. His parents were Reggie and Sylvie Houdot Corbeille. And Reggie is sometimes described as a farmer, but to be clear, he was a very successful farmer. This wasn't like a small family farm. He wasn't doing farm work on somebody else's farm. He had a large scale, multi-property commercial farm that included some really lucrative vineyards. Gustave also had three younger sisters, Zoé, Zélie, and Juliette. And these daughters appeared in a lot of their brothers' paintings.

• 5:42Holly Frey?

  Yeah, he, uh, he liked to paint his friends and family in paintings, as well as himself, which we'll talk about. After his early schooling, Gustave enrolled at the College Royale and then attended a fine art school in Besançon. His proclivity toward becoming an artist wasn't really in line with what his parents had in mind for him. They wanted him to pursue a career in law. So when he was in his early twenties, the actual year this happened varies by source, but they sent him to Paris to study law. He did not do that. He is said to have been really very, very close to this family and to have truly loved his parents. We'll talk a lot about his letters home to his parents and his family, but he really

• 6:24Holly Frey?

  just did not see any path for himself in life but art.

• 6:28Tracy V. Wilson?

  So when he got to Paris, he did not enroll in law school. Unsurprising, based on what Holly just said. But he also didn't enroll in art school, though. He went to the Louvre and studied the art there and also made contact with artists who lived in the city so he could take private lessons, in some cases, ask them for advice. In particular, he studied with romantic painter Baron Charles von Steuben and finally confessed all of this to his father. He said he could not be a lawyer, he only wanted to be an artist. His father's response was surprising and incredibly supportive. He wrote to his son, quote, "If anyone gives up, it will be you, not

• 7:08Tracy V. Wilson?

  me." He assured his son that he would support his ambitions, both emotionally and financially, and that he would sell off everything he had if it came to that. I don't think that's what he was expecting of his father.

• 7:21Holly Frey?

  So Corbeille, with his father's blessing at this point, started pursuing an art career in earnest. He wrote to his parents, quote, "Within five years, I must have a reputation in Paris." But he still did not enroll at any formal school. Instead, he was largely self-taught, and his development was based largely on copying works of famous artists, something a lot of artists did and still do, to gain technical skills and form their own style. He also, as we said, took some private lessons. And he started submitting his original works to the Academy des Beaux-Arts Annual Salon exhibit. And in 1844, just a few years into this effort, one of his paintings was accepted.

• 8:04Tracy V. Wilson?

  That painting was Corbeille with a Black Dog, or Self-Portrait with a Black Dog. This is not a close-up portrait, but a full view of the subject. That, of course, is Corbeille himself, obviously. He's seated with his entire body included. And it's interesting because Corbeille appears to be sitting on the ground with an English spaniel standing partially on his lap. But the point of view of the viewer is even lower down than the subject, close to the ground. So Corbeille appears to be looking down. He has on a hat that has his upper face in shadow and a drapey coat that's flipped open at his leg to reveal a yellow lining. Corbeille wrote to his family of the acceptance of this painting, saying,

• 8:47Tracy V. Wilson?

  quote, "I have been admitted to the exhibition and am highly delighted. It is not the picture I should have preferred them to take, but it makes no matter. They did me the honor of hanging me well in the exhibition, and that is some compensation."

• 9:01Holly Frey?

  The following year, 1845, Corbeille, spurred on by his success, submitted five works for consideration for the salon, but only one small one was accepted. That's "Le Guitareiro," and it features a man in an almost reverse image of the black dog portrait from the previous year we just described. Once again, seated on the ground, but this time, no dog in his lap, he's cradling a guitar. This is a very romantic image, harkening to an earlier time period. And although it's not categorized as a self-portrait, Corbeille pretty obviously used himself as a model. Corbeille continued to submit pieces for the salon in the years after this, but his success rate kind of dropped off and was

• 9:42Holly Frey?

  pretty low. But he remained undaunted. He was a very confident person. That's probably a little easier when you know you have financial backing. And he continued to paint, and he continued to envision and plan his place in the art world.

• 9:57Tracy V. Wilson?

  Even in these early years of his career, Gustave was really shrewd about crafting his image with the public and with the art community. Though he had come from a wealthy family and he received a good education, because he came from the country, Parisians often assumed he was just an uneducated peasant. He was totally happy to let people do that because he knew it added to his mystique as a painter.

• 10:22Holly Frey?

  He saw every opportunity to like, build his life story in a way that would increase interest in his work. We'll talk about one later on that is a little mind blowing to me. One of the paintings that Corbeille worked on, starting in the 1840s, was one called "The Wounded Man." This was another image of the artist himself, this time in the romantic role of a man reclining with his eyes closed, having suffered an injury, presumably from a sword. This is a painting that is often listed as having started in the 1840s and being finished in the 1850s. He didn't normally take that long to make a painting, but it wasn't considered finished until then because Corbeille altered it significantly at

• 11:04Holly Frey?

  one point. The hero in the image had been accompanied by a woman leaning over his shoulder. She was, it is believed, based on Virginie Binet, who modeled for a lot of paintings for Corbeille during a roughly 10-year-long romantic relationship. The two of them were not married, but they lived together as a couple. To all outward appearances, they were as committed as a married couple. They had a son together named Desiree Alfred Emil. But in the early 1950s, Virginie moved away from Paris when she and Corbeille broke up, and she took their child with her. And it seems that she and Corbeille had no contact after the breakup. And Corbeille had then painted her out of the wounded man, and he placed a sword in her place in the

• 11:49Holly Frey?

  painting. If you look at it, it does look a little weird. It's not bad. It's just a strange, it doesn't feel like that was part of the original composition. He did not, after this, have any long-term, serious relationships, although there were a lot of women in his life. He kind of just enjoyed playing the field, it seems. He wrote to a friend of his relationships with women, quote, "I am as inclined to get married as I am to hang myself."

• 12:17Tracy V. Wilson?

  Corbeille's relationship with the Salon waxed and waned in the late 1840s. He went from that elation of having felt that his work was well-placed and that he was just getting started. He went from that to a long series of setbacks and feeling as though he would never again gain recognition. 1847 was especially rough for him. He submitted three paintings and all three were rejected.

• 12:44Holly Frey?

  So we've been talking about the Salon and submitting every year. And if you're wondering, why didn't he just show his art somewhere else? There really wasn't another avenue available at this time in Paris. The Salon was the art show of the year, and it was the place where patrons went to purchase art and develop relationships with artists so they would have ongoing patronages in someplace. Courbet had written of it to his family, "I must exhibit to make myself known, and unfortunately, that is the only exhibition. In past years, when I had not thoroughly mastered my own style and was still painting to a certain extent in theirs, they accepted my work. But now that I am myself, there is no hope for me."

• 13:27Holly Frey?

  Other, now-famous artists were similarly despondent at the way the salon jury was running things. Several had even met to brainstorm how they might establish a new independent salon, and that included people like Delacroix and Rousseau.

• 13:42Tracy V. Wilson?

  In 1848, King Louis Philippe of France was forced to abdicate, and later that year, Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte became the first president of the second French Republic. Of course, this was a huge change for the country, but for Gustave Courbet and other artists, it resulted in a very significant shift in how the salon was curated and had less rigid requirements for subject matter and style. At the 1848 exhibition, he had 10 paintings accepted for showing. A lot of his paintings during this time reflected the change in France's shifting socio-political climate. At a time when voting rights were

• 14:22Tracy V. Wilson?

  expanding, for men, anyway, and the right to work was also adopted as a governmental reform, Courbet was painting people at work in various trades. He also had the very unique insight, or possibly conceit, to see that he was the face of a huge change in art. He wrote to his family, "I am about to make it any time now, for I am surrounded by people who are very influential in the newspapers and the arts, and who are very excited about my painting. Indeed, we are about to form a new school, of which I will be the representative in the field of painting."

• 15:00Holly Frey?

  In a moment, we will talk about Gustave Courbet's shift to painting landscapes and pastorals, and how his representation of the common man became so important in art history. But first, we will pause for a sponsor break.

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• 17:50Holly Frey?

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• 18:33Holly Frey?

  Not to cancel them, not to hype them more, but to actually understand them. Because when it comes to your health, who you listen to matters. Start asking better questions and listen to Help Versus Hype on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 18:59Holly Frey?

  So at this point, Courbet had been in Paris for roughly a decade trying to make a name for himself. He had shifted from those romantic portraits we talked about to doing some more different types of art. And although he had his father's financial support and then the support of an art collector benefactor named Alfred Bruyah, no one could argue that he had been idle during those 10 years. He had finally earned a gold medal in the Paris Salon. And that meant that he didn't have to submit his work to Salon juries for exhibition going forward. So he took a little pause and he went home to Orneaux to spend time with his family. And this break from life in the city really proved to be exactly what the artist needed. And being back in the countryside inspired Corbeille in a whole new way.

• 19:44Tracy V. Wilson?

  Two of Corbeille's most famous paintings were inspired by this visit home. The first was titled Les Cassureurs de Pierre, or The Stonebreakers. As its title suggests, this is an image of an older man breaking stones and a younger man carrying a basket of broken pieces along the side of the road. There's an empty, dark landscape behind them. This is an interesting image because not only did it come to be seen as a clear example of Corbeille's desire to put realism front and center, it also shows everyday working people in vivid detail without romanticizing their lives, was eventually recognized as raising questions about France's socioeconomic structure.

• 20:26Holly Frey?

  And that last bit is especially interesting because while most art historians today would credit Corbeille with being very deliberate about making a social statement, and Corbeille himself later claimed that that was all intentional, there have definitely been some write-ups about this work that suggests that it might have been a little bit less calculated. Corbeille had seen a man named Gagey, who was a roadmender, working as the artist passed by him in a carriage, and he had written to a friend about it, quote, "Here is an old man of 70, bending over his work with his hammer raised, his body burned by the sun, his face shaded with a wide straw hat, his coarse stiff breeches are all patched,

• 21:08Holly Frey?

  and his heels are showing through his stockings, which once were white, in his broken old wooden shoes. Near him is a young man, his skin burned brown, his filthy ragged shirt shows his side and his arms. Alas, in such low life, this is the beginning and the end. Rarely can one find so complete an expression of poverty and wretchedness."

• 21:32Holly Frey?

  Corbeille then invited Gagey to his studio to sit for him for the painting of the Stonebreakers.

• 21:38Tracy V. Wilson?

  The second famous work that was inspired by that trip to Ornaud was A Burial at Ornaud, which he painted in 1850. This painting is massive, 315 centimeters by 660 centimeters, or 21 feet by 10 feet. It depicts his great uncle's funeral. There are more than 40 people in this composition, which is very dark, includes mourners, clergy, and family. They're all gathered around an open grave. He showed this at the 1851 Salon, much to the chagrin of critics. The large dimensions that Corbeille had used were normally reserved for romantic subjects, so seeing such a stark scene realistically painted on something so big,

• 22:23Tracy V. Wilson?

  that was considered gauche and in poor taste. Even so, some critics understood the importance of this as a moment of massive change in art. One write-up said that Corbeille had established himself as an artist, quote, "in the manner of a cannonball which lodges itself in a wall."

• 22:42Holly Frey?

  That's such a great description. These two pieces look so classic as pieces of art to modernize, not to be confused with classicism. But they just look like, when you look at them, you're like, yes, that's, that seems like famous old art. It can be difficult, though, to grasp just how radical they were considered in mid 19th century France, at a time when the art world was very much about showing the beauty of all things. And indeed, we said Corbeille had studied with a romantic painter, but he had shifted gears and he was painting things that most people at the time would not consider beautiful. And he was doing it with this very intense detail and what is often described as urgency.

• 23:25Tracy V. Wilson?

  These pastorals cemented him in the eyes of the art and literature scene of France as the major player in the new realism movement. So we should level set for just a moment and talk about realism and what it means, because it's easy to assume it means one thing when really it's a pretty broad term. Realism in terms of art is not necessarily about replicating a real world object in faithful accuracy, although it can include that. The more important foundation of it is depicting real things rather than something fanciful or imagined. There are a lot of works of art that can be put under this umbrella, going all the way back to ancient Greek sculpture,

• 24:07Tracy V. Wilson?

  but the term realism didn't really come into play as an artistic school of thought until the 19th century, when Corbeau was alive.

• 24:16Holly Frey?

  And the realism movement that Corbeau is associated with was a rejection of the classicism and romanticism that had been the standard for French art for a very long time. He wrote about this in a letter in 1861 in a way that makes his feelings on this matter entirely clear, writing, quote, "Painting is an essentially concrete art and can consist only of the representation of things both real and existing."

• 24:42Tracy V. Wilson?

  As he came to recognize that his work depicting the French countryside had given him a reputation and deeper name recognition, Corbeau really leaned into it. Orne, where he was born, is in the province of Bourgogne-Franche-Comte, which is in the eastern part of France, and it became the star of a lot of Corbeau's work.

• 25:03Holly Frey?

  When Louis Napoleon declared himself Emperor Napoleon III after staging a coup, the atmosphere for art in Paris once again shifted. Although Gustave Corbeau had already been seen as controversial in his work, as the government became more authoritarian and a lot more conservative in its taste, his work was perceived as being downright confrontational. His painting, "Young Ladies of the Village," which shows three women, modeled by his sisters, offering alms to a young girl who is herding cows, was critiqued as a clumsy affront to social mores. When you look at this painting today, you go, oh, that's lovely. People were real mad about it at the time.

• 25:47Tracy V. Wilson?

  In 1854, Gustave started to work on a massive project, and we use massive both literally and figuratively. The canvas of the painting, which he completed in six weeks, is 361 by 598 centimeters. That's 11.8 feet by 19.6 feet, so similar to the dimensions of a burial at Orne. But the subject matter is expansive as well. The painting is sometimes called "The Artist's Studio" or "The Painter's Studio", but the full title is "A Painter's Studio: A Real Allegory Summing Up Seven Years of My Life as an Artist." Courbet is at the center of the painting, working. He's painting a landscape of an area near Orne.

• 26:30Tracy V. Wilson?

  Behind him is what appears to be an artist's model. It's a naked woman with her dress at her feet, but he's not painting her or even looking at her. Instead, she is closely watching him. There's also a small child watching him paint. So these three figures, Courbet, the woman, and the child, form the central grouping of the image, and the rest of the painting's casts of characters are separated to the right and the left.

• 26:55Holly Frey?

  The group to the left is filled with the sort of rural characters that populated much of Courbet's work. There's also a representation of the crucifixion of Christ on the left side as well, close to and kind of just behind the left side of the painter's canvas in the image as he works. On the right are Courbet's friends and patrons, including the writer Charles Baudelaire. This painting continues to be interpreted and analyzed by art history scholars. In mixing allegory and reality, Courbet seems to have laid out a puzzle for the viewer to solve, but no one seems to agree on what exactly the meaning of the piece is.

• 27:33Tracy V. Wilson?

  This painting was submitted for the 1855 exhibition in Paris, and it was not accepted. After having achieved a level of recognition where he had been able to place pieces in the salon without jury approval, this was just a slap in the face. Napoleon III had directed that only pleasant art be included at the salon, and the artist's studio was determined to be too demanding of the viewer. And Corbeau had 11 pieces accepted for the salon, but he just took matters into his own hands to get all of his paintings in front of the eyes of the public. He rented a space near the exposition and set up his own pavilion

• 28:14Tracy V. Wilson?

  to showcase this huge painting, as well as some other works. He called this the Pavilion of Realism. The Pavilion of Realism was not a success, although many of his contemporaries, and Eugene Delacroix in particular, admired the ambition of this effort. It just wasn't well attended. The public mostly saw this as a stunt, or like a really expensive tantrum.

• 28:38Holly Frey?

  Yeah, there's one exchange, I will get it wrong because I'm just retelling it, I didn't quote it here, where there was a person who was like, "This is really a lot, like you really think highly of yourself." And Corbeau wrote back, "Do you not know I'm the most arrogant person in Paris?" He was just like, "This is how it is, dude. It's all my paintings or nothing." Incidentally, it was during the 1850s when Corbeau's fame was rapidly on the rise that he painted the two paintings that are spoofed in the opening of What We Do in the Shadows. The first, in terms of when Corbeau painted it, although I think it appears second in the opening credits of the show, is a painting titled Madame Auguste Quocque, which was a commissioned rendering of Mathilde de Porte, as ordered

• 29:23Holly Frey?

  by her husband. This features a woman in almost full length, wearing a black pleated gown with a striking green wrap. The television show created one with the vampire Nadia as Madame de Porte, and in the show's opening, there is also a matching painting of Nadia's husband, Laszlo, although Corbeau did not paint a companion piece to Madame Auguste Quocque. The second Corbeau spoof in the TV show's opening credits, once again, features Nadia in a recreation of Corbeau's 1856 painting, Woman in a Riding Hat. You'll also see that sometimes listed as The Horsewoman. This was also a portrait commission. Gustave was hired to paint Madame Clement Laurier as a wedding gift to the bride from her husband.

• 30:04Holly Frey?

  In this case, Courbet did also paint a portrait of Monsieur Laurier, but it is not that portrait that's used for Laszlo in the show. There's a matching portrait made that appears to be an original creation to look more like a match to the Madame Laurier painting. You can see both of Courbet's original portraits at the Met if you're interested and want to do a, some sort of what we do in the shadows art crawl. That sounds great.

• 30:31Holly Frey?

  In a moment, we'll talk about Courbet's influence on the Impressionists who followed him and his involvement in politics. But first, we are going to hear from some of the sponsors who keep Stuff You Missed in History Class going.

• 30:45Speaker 00

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• 31:16Holly Frey?

  We've all done it. Tumble down an internet rabbit hole trying to self diagnose. And sometimes doing our own research can leave us more anxious than informed. Your feed is packed with wellness trends telling you to cold plunge, protein max, detox, track your sleep. But what's actually real? What's exaggerated? What's just wrong? That's exactly what Health vs. Hype from the American Medical Association and iHeart Media's Ruby Studio is here to find out. Each episode, Emmy nominated science communicator Trace Dominguez, who's racked up billions of views across PBS, Discovery Channel, and YouTube, talks to doctors, influencers, and real people trying these trends.

• 31:58Holly Frey?

  Not to cancel them, not to hype them more, but to actually understand them. Because when it comes to your health, who you listen to matters. Start asking better questions and listen to Health vs. Hype on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 32:19Tracy V. Wilson?

  Guess who's back in the house? The old gays return for season two of Silver Linings, their hit podcast from iHeart's Ruby Studio in partnership with ViiV Healthcare. Just wait until you hear what hosts Robert McMillan and Jesay have in store this time around. They strut back down memory lane navigating life, love, loss, and everything that shaped them along the way. And as usual, someone just might break into song. From leather bars to bathhouses, dance floors to drag brunch, nothing stays off limits. These are the kinds of insights that can only come from experience. So, listen to your elders, honey, and discover the silver linings you can take with you. All sass, zero filter, and decades of perspective from four friends proving that queer joy

• 33:04Tracy V. Wilson?

  only gets better with age on the podcast that never gets old. Listen to Silver Linings, available on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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• 34:19Holly Frey?

  Corbeille went to Germany for a visit in 1856, and there he made a lot of new connections with fellow artists. Whereas France had come to see Corbeille at this point as a rabble-rouser, or sometimes even a nuisance for the way that he both ignored the traditions of the art scene of the day and thumbed his nose at criticism, it seems that the German sensibilities were more willing to embrace his realism. He had painted a lot of works that featured hunting parties, and those were particularly popular in Germany.

• 34:48Tracy V. Wilson?

  One of the interesting aspects of Corbeille's realism is that it wasn't confined to any particular subject matter. He painted landscapes, he painted the lower classes at their work, he made portraits of himself and other people, he painted nude studies of women, quite a lot of them.

• 35:05Holly Frey?

  His work in landscapes, though, is often said to have paved the way for the Impressionist movement. As he worked to capture things like the sky as it was breaking into a storm over the sea at the shoreline, he had started to bring in the ideas that shaped Impressionism, particularly in his use of color and light reflections. Whereas Corbeille's realism was all about capturing all and any subjects of the world, Impressionism would kind of take that to a new space as it showed the world realistically, but with a focus on the ways that light and color can shift our perceptions of reality.

• 35:38Tracy V. Wilson?

  Throughout the 1860s, Gustave enjoyed quite a bit of success. He had become the figurehead not just for realism, but for breaking away from the establishment, and that really rebellious spirit, combined with his skill, attracted a lot of collectors. And though his relationship with the French government under Napoleon III wasn't good, he was nominated as a recipient of the French Legion of Honor in 1870. Corbeille turned this down, writing, "Honor does not lie in a title or a ribbon. It lies in actions and the motives for actions. I honor myself by remaining faithful to my lifelong principles. If I betrayed them, I should desert honor to where its mark."

• 36:22Holly Frey?

  Yeah, he was not a fan of Napoleon III's government.

• 36:27Holly Frey?

  At the end of the Franco-German War, also called the Franco-Prussian War, the Paris Commune formed as an insurrectionist group in response to dissatisfaction at the armistice agreement that France had signed with Germany. Emperor Napoleon III had entered the war way overconfident, and France had not really been prepared. And in the Treaty of Frankfurt, France had had to concede the annexation of Alsace and part of Lorraine, as well as the payment of 5 billion francs to cover the expenses of the German Army's occupation of France. In the briefest of terms, this meant that the Paris Commune was against both the Army of Versailles and the German Army. There was fear that the National Assembly was going to reinstate the monarchy, which was opposite of what Parisians

• 37:12Holly Frey?

  who favored the Republic wanted. And Corbeille aligned with the Commune as it attempted to establish its own French government and reject the Third Republic and Napoleon III. The Commune had been established in the middle of March 1871, and it was suppressed in May, so it didn't last very long. And Corbeille had left the group early in May before it was disbanded, because he actually found it too extreme. So we'll hear in a quote later, "He didn't really like aligning with anybody." But that association with the Paris Commune really hurt him.

• 37:45Tracy V. Wilson?

  Corbeille had been elected president of the Artists' Federation, and in that role, it fell to him to reestablish the National Salon and to reopen the museums, which had been closed during the war. He made an unusual move, though, and instead focused on monuments outside of Paris: the Palace at Fontainebleau, which had been occupied by German forces, and the porcelain factory at Sev.

• 38:10Holly Frey?

  As all of this was going on, members of the Paris Commune had decided to destroy a military monument in the Place Vendôme. It was a column that commemorated Napoleon Bonaparte's military, and it was something Corbeille had spoken of with disdain on many occasions. When the Commune destroyed it on May 16, Corbeille was believed to have spearheaded the move, even though he had left the group before that happened. He had circulated a petition to take that monument down the year before in 1870, so there was an official record of him calling for its destruction. After the commune was conclusively defeated by the Army of Versailles at the end of May, Corbeille was arrested in the first week of June and put on trial as a political instigator.

• 38:55Tracy V. Wilson?

  This trial did not go well. The people who actually had destroyed the monument had fled the country, although they had insisted that the artist had not been involved. Even so, he was found guilty and sentenced to six months in prison. There was also a fine, although because Corbeille had friends who were highly placed in the new provisional government, the sum of that fine was minimal.

• 39:18Holly Frey?

  Yeah, he was in this unique space where he kind of disliked every established thing and fought against it, but he also had friends in almost every position, you know, with any alignment, because a lot of people were buying his work and were fans of his. Gustave Corbeille was sent to prison at Saint-Palagi, but he fell ill and he was transferred to a medical facility near Paris to finish his sentence. When that sentence ended and he was a free man again, he did not stay in Paris. He instead went back to his beloved countryside and family in Orne. He hoped to rest and rebuild his health and put the whole thing behind him, but that was not to be.

• 39:58Holly Frey?

  But even while incarcerated, he had written letters to his family that this whole ordeal had a bright side, which is that it was only going to drive up interest in his work and enable him to raise his prices.

• 40:10Tracy V. Wilson?

  In 1872, Adelphier, who had helped ensure Corbeille's fines weren't too steep after his trial, resigned from his presidency, was put Bonaparte loyalists back in power. They did not feel that Corbeille had truly paid his debt to society, so the French government sued Corbeille for the money needed to replace the destroyed monument. The trial for this was never going to go his way. Corbeille was fined 500,000 francs, and this was an absurd amount of money. There was no way he could pay it. By the time the judgment was passed down, all of Corbeille's assets had already been seized, including all of his paintings. Everything he owned had been taken by the French government.

• 40:56Holly Frey?

  Yeah, I have seen different numbers aside from that 500,000 francs, but it's always many hundreds of thousands.

• 41:04Holly Frey?

  It's kind of like the absurdly high number of going, Tracy, you owe me $12 billion. No, really, it was 13 billion. I mean, it's like, it felt that absurd to him because he had nothing. In addition to that, the government had been watching his family and friends. They were all under surveillance. And a number of artists that he was associated with finally decided that being associated with him was too dangerous and that he needed to be barred from future salons and basically excommunicated from the city's art circles. One of his friends in the art world wrote to another the sad phrase, "He must be dead to us." So he left

• 41:44Holly Frey?

  the country and headed for Switzerland. On July 23, 1873, he left France and never returned.

• 41:51Tracy V. Wilson?

  Initially, Corbeille went to Fleurier, which is only about 10 kilometers or a little more than six miles away from the French border. But Gustave became anxious that this was just too close to France. So he moved about 85 kilometers south to Le Véen-Lac Le Mans. He didn't stay there either, but also didn't travel very far before putting down roots. He went just about two kilometers more south to La Tour de Pils and purchased an inn, which he named Bonport or Safe Harbor.

• 42:23Holly Frey?

  Because he had left Paris, he actually missed out on a move by some of his fellow artists, which no doubt would have pleased him. In 1874, Monet, Pissaro, Cezanne, and Renoir, tired of the Paris Salon, offering the only chance at having their work publicly seen, put together their own show. And that is actually the art exhibition that the term "impressionists" was coined at. Many art historians credit Corbeille's daring with helping to kickstart the impressionists. Some have said it would have happened anyway, but it happened about 10 years earlier than it would have had Corbeille not been involved.

• 42:57Tracy V. Wilson?

  In his final years, Corbeille drank heavily and neglected his health. The stress of the trials and his incarceration and having so many of his colleagues turn their back on him, that all took a toll. He had hoped that he might be granted an amnesty and be able to return to France, but instead, the French government directed him to pay the cost of the monument in 10,000 franc installments.

• 43:22Holly Frey?

  It's like going, you'll owe us forever. They also auctioned off all of his art that they had seized. Corbeille died on December 31, 1877. He was only 58, and the cause of his death was listed as edema. That was likely the result of drinking. Although he had never gotten to return to France in life, in 1919, his remains were moved from Switzerland to Orne, where he was reinterred in the same cemetery featured in his painting, A Burial at Orne.

• 43:51Tracy V. Wilson?

  A 1912 collection of Corbeille's work with commentary by Léon's Benedite opens with the line, quote, "Corbeille was one of Corbeille's favorite subjects. It has often been thrown up against him by men who forget that an artist has great difficulty in finding a model as convenient or as well studied as himself. But, it was said, the painter who delighted in making so many of his contemporaries look uglier than they were was much nicer and more generous when it came to his own face. The artist has no excuse, save the masterpieces that his rather exclusive indulgence has given us." We've only talked about a couple of the self portraits here. It's worth checking out.

• 44:35Tracy V. Wilson?

  More of them, the one that's going to be on our social media, is not one of the ones that we have mentioned here, but is striking.

• 44:44Holly Frey?

  But really, Gustave Corbeille gave the art world an awful lot more than beautiful paintings. His rebellious spirit, which was part of his art, really before he even became politically active, led to a number of innovations and moves that scandalized the art world at the time, but became very commonplace as later generations of artists adopted them. We already talked about his embrace of realism at a time when Romanticism was the standard. His provocative paintings and behaviors were not accidental. He had written early in his career that he had a goal, quote, "to change the public's taste and way of seeing. No small task, for it means no more and no less than overturning what exists and replacing it."

• 45:27Tracy V. Wilson?

  In addition to that, Corbeille's nudes threw the Paris art establishment into a tizzy. He was certainly not at all the first person to paint nude figures. Historical figures in art were completely acceptable at the time as nudes, even in very sensual scenarios. But his realism was very real. It left nothing to the imagination. It wasn't romanticized. One of his most well-known examples of this is a painting titled Origin of the World, or L'origine du monde, which is a view of a woman's body lying on a bed in which her genitalia are the focus of the work. When he painted this in 1866, it was completely shocking. It was a private commission and it didn't go on public display,

• 46:11Tracy V. Wilson?

  but art critics certainly saw it and they weighed in on it. There's debate around it that continues until this day. The Origin of the World passed from private collector to private collector over the years. It was once even owned by Jacques Lacan, but it didn't go on public display until 1988, when it was shown at the Brooklyn Museum in New York. Today, it's part of the collection of the Musée d'Orsay and it still elicits really strong responses. But it and similar works set the stage for other artists to show human bodies without the limitations that the art established had placed on them before this work. There's also some fun gossip about who the model for this may have been that Holly is going to talk about on Friday.

• 46:55Holly Frey?

  Yes, that gossip is good. This is interesting because it's one of those things that was considered pornographic when he painted it in 1866. There are still people today who will say that's straight up pornography and not art. It's very controversial, so he sure did stay relevant in that regard. Even in less explicit paintings, Corbeille's detractors found him to be scandalous. In 1872, at a time when the painter's life and country were in upheaval, he painted a work called Sleep. And this features two naked women asleep in each other's arms. It was considered so controversial when it was shown publicly that there was actually a police report filed about it for indecency. As Corbeille was already on the outs with the French government at this time,

• 47:40Holly Frey?

  that report went into a file that was being kept to document his life.

• 47:45Tracy V. Wilson?

  On a more technical note, rather than relating to his subject matter, Corbeau was also one of the first artists to use a palette knife in his fingers to apply the paint to the canvas. Palette knives were strictly considered mixing tools at the time. This was the fine art equivalent of applying wall paint with a stir stick. For Corbeau, though, it was a different way to control his medium.

• 48:08Holly Frey?

  Yeah, and it was one of those things. I mean, obviously, it worked and he was very good at it. I think it was Cezanne that said, like, his talent was just limitless. And it was kind of a reflection of him being able to do completely new things in ways that resulted in just beautiful work. Today, Corbeau's work is recognized for its importance in the development of Western art. There are frequent exhibitions mounted featuring most of his works. Two canvases, though, are generally excluded. Both Burial at Ornans and The Painter's Studio are very large, which makes shipping difficult, but they are also considered to be too delicate to be shipped. So even though they are considered some of his most important works, both remain in the permanent collection of the Musée d'Orsay, and they cannot be loaned out.

• 48:53Holly Frey?

  Another important Corbeau painting that you will not see in any collected exhibit today is The Stonebreakers, because it was unfortunately destroyed during the bombing of Dresden in World War II.

• 49:05Tracy V. Wilson?

  Eight years before his death, Corbeau was embroiled in France's very volatile political shifts. He described himself and his ideology in a single succinct passage in a letter to a friend. It seems the right place to wrap up his story. He wrote, quote, "I am 50 years old, and I have always lived in freedom. Let me end my life free. When I am dead, let this be said of me. He belonged to no school, to no church, to no institution, to no academy, least of all to any regime except the regime of liberty."

• 49:38Holly Frey?

  Gustave Corbeau.

• 49:46Tracy V. Wilson?

  Thanks so much for joining us on this Saturday. If you'd like to send us a note, our email address is [email protected]. And you can subscribe to the show on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

• 50:08Tracy V. Wilson?

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