READINGS OF GUSTAVE COURBET MARK EDWIN SOUNESS A ...

artist who tries to reproduce every nuance of shade that can be observed in exotic and
expensive fabrics, a feature common in orientalist painting. 15 Finally, he censures the type
of artist who represents classical nudes, „the sickly languor of . . . masses of obscene flesh
that they call chaste Suzanne, Sleeping nymphs or that they adorn with equally amusing
titles.‟ 16 In Hawke‟s opinion, then, the vast swathe of contemporary French painters
promotes a purely gratuitous use of aesthetic conventions and has no interest in educating
the people about social corruption or reform. Supported by the state and its institutions,
these artists, he insists, have had their day. 17
Much of Hawke‟s hostility towards the state and its art institutions is fuelled by his
hatred of bourgeois values, which he considers to be socially unjust because they promote
self-interest and oppress the working class. Bourgeois values, he says, have emerged with
the rise of capitalism and have systematically destroyed the social nature of people to create
a „brutal order‟ in which citizens only pursue individual interests. 18 However, he suggests
that the corrupt nature of this system has been exposed by the February Revolution and
central to the revolutionary impulse of 1848 was social reform, a reform marking the
15 ibid, p4. Here, Hawke criticises the artist who „croit avoir atteint les hauteurs du sublime, en
exprimant banalement les plis d‟une robe, ou les nuances les plus imperceptibles d‟une étoffe de
satin ou de velours. Mon maître, la chambre noire est votre supérieur.‟
16 ibid, p4: „D‟autres encore vous traitent insolemment d‟insensé, si vous n‟admirez pas l‟énergie
farouche de cette expression exagérée, ou la fade langueur de ces masses de chairs impudiques qu‟ils
nomment la chaste Suzanne, les Nymphes endormies, ou qu‟ils décorent d‟autres titres tout aussi
amusans.‟
17 ibid, p4: „Le temps est passé et à jamais passé, pour ces peintres courtisans qui mettaient toute leur
gloire à un certain arrangement de dessin et de couleur, – sans avoir aucun souci des intérêts
profonds de l‟art comme instituteurs du peuple.‟
18 See Pierre Hawke, „Quelques mots sur le Salon de peinture au Louvre, 1848,‟ Le Représentant du
peuple, 28 April 1848, p4: „L’ordre règne à Varsovie! parole pleine d‟un sens profond, aussi vraie
pour la France que pour le monde entier. L‟ordre règne. . . . Cela veut dire l‟ordre brutal, où hommes
et choses sont entassés sans aucune pensée sociale . . .‟
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