READINGS OF GUSTAVE COURBET MARK EDWIN SOUNESS A ...

eference to the outward appearance of the body and its figure. 26 All the writings about
society examined in this thesis – whether they supported social change through revolution
or whether they appealled for the preservation of the existing social order – made their
arguments with reference to the state of social or environmental circumstances as reflected
in the physical appearance of ordinary contemporary people represented by Courbet.
Numerous critiques of Courbet‟s work between 1848 and 1878 argued that human
beings were innately predisposed to sympathise with each other – that human health
ultimately depended upon social harmony and that Courbet‟s paintings worked towards
such harmony either by expressing this sympathetic instinct or exposing society‟s
oppression of it. Indicating a widespread disillusionment with a plethora of inadequate
political experiments during the post-revolutionary period, and characteristically skeptical
of the religious idea of divine creation, these writings reflected a growing confidence in
science as the source of truth and the impetus for change. Many commentators looked to
medical science for such confidence, referring to the physiological condition of ordinary
people represented by Courbet as evidence of either the social and political malaise of the
time or the innate human potential to overcome such malaise. „Physiology,‟ the study of the
anatomy and organs of the human body in their capacity to function, act and behave, was a
keystone for such writings; cerebral physiology, or „phrenology,‟ was an important
dimension of such study, identifying different organs of the brain with various faculties and
behavioural capacities. „Biology‟ – the general study of living beings and the influence of
26 For detailed examinations of physiognomy (the theory that there is a direct correspondence
between a person‟s inner being and outer appearance) and phrenology (the theory that the different
parts or organs of the brain correspond to different functions and faculties), see the various essays in
Melissa Percival and Graeme Tytler, eds., Physiognomy in Profile, Lavater’s Impact on European
Culture, University of Delaware Press, Newark, 2005. See also Mary Cowling, The Artist as
Anthropologist: the Representation of Type and Character in Victorian Art, Cambridge University
Press, 1989, and Judith Wechsler, A Human Comedy, Physiognomy and Caricature in 19 th Century
Paris, Thames and Hudson, London, 1982.
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