READINGS OF GUSTAVE COURBET MARK EDWIN SOUNESS A ...

chapter reveals, despite their disapproval of much of Courbet‟s art, Dauger and de Geofroy
acknowledged and reinforced both the positivist status of the artist‟s work and the social
power that this status was perceived to have. Fully supporting the ameliorative capacity of
this perceived power, Champfleury sought approval for Courbet‟s work within a highly
conservative readership by arguing that the positivist truth expressed in his paintings had no
political association. The writer highlighted the order expressed in the artist‟s work – the
social structure discernible in the physical appearance of the artist‟s subjects – but
illuminated degenerate aspects of that order and presented the need for reform as a natural
rather than political necessity.
If positivism provided a wide platform of political opinion through which
Courbet‟s work was interpreted, how did the artist himself view the positivist dimensions of
his practice and what sources of philosophical, aesthetic and political sustenance did he
find? Posing these questions, chapters three and four examine positivist interpretations of
Courbet‟s work appearing during the Second Empire (1852-1870), a period of French
history characterised largely by the strict censorship of images and written publications,
enforced social control and imperialistic propaganda. These two chapters highlight the
artist‟s own views, the affiliation of his ideas with those of Proudhon and Champfleury at a
particular point in his career, and the manner in which he deployed these ideas to criticise
contemporary society and politics. Both chapters also unearth significant findings about the
manner in which positivist interpreters of Courbet‟s work, such as Champfleury and the
artist himself, sought to disseminate their ideas and influence society by exploiting the
central role of publications and periodicals in debating the burning social, political and
artistic issues of the time. Chapter three examines writings connecting Courbet‟s work to
the positivist view that history constituted an evolutionary process of social development, a
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