Courbet's Exhibitionism

COURBET' S EXHIBITIONISM
In a letter to his patron Bruyas, Courbet described
his vision of the show he planned to mount for the 1855
Universal Exposition: "From here I can already see an
enormous tent with a single column in the center; for
walls, scaffolding covered with canvas, all mounted on
a platform; then the employees, a man in a black suit
minding the office, opposite the canes and umbrellas,
then two or three ushers. This will really be enough to
make Paris dance on its head. It will be without question
the best comedy that's been played in our times; there
are some people who will get sick over it, that's for
sure"~. Across the letter he sketched a tent (fig. 1). In
reality, as a newly discovered photograph shows
(fig. 14), Courbet's pavilion was rectangular, not a tent
at all, and this drawing, appearing across an unpub-
lished letter, was a private fantasy rather than a public
fact. And yet the public did apprehend his gesture, even
without benefit of his drawing. On reading his letter
today we might well wonder: Who would laugh at this
comedy, and who would get sick over it ? What was
the nature of Courbet's exhibitionism" ? - a word en-
tirely relevant, as we shall see, to the contemporary dis-
course surrounding this artist. By placing in context the
various aspects of Courbet's endeavor as they appeared
to his contemporaries, we can gain a more profound
sense of the reasons for which he was both praised and
damned in his own time.
Although the negative criticism which first greeted
Courbet's work has been taken by modernists as a par-
adigmatic example of the persecution of the avant-garde
artist by an uncomprehending public, I have argued
elsewhere that Courbet in 1855 was actually supported
by the professional artists' periodicals 2 . La Revue universelle
des Arts, La Revue des Beaux-Arts, Journal des
Arts, L'Artiste, all either praised him or were sympa-
thetic to his plight. The most savage attacks in 1855
came from critics and caricaturists working for periodi-
cals of the conservative right, such as A.J. Du Pays and
BY
PATRICIA MAINARDI
e - 1 Q4'
Q ulenbots in L'Olustrationj . Nonetheless, as this nega-
tive criticism ha always taken center stage, it is im-
portant to explo e the nightmare vision that Courbet
presented to aest etic and political conservatives.
FIG. 1. - Gustave COURBET. Autograph letter with a sketch of
the 1855 Pavilion.

254
Today we focus on Courbet's gesture of mounting
his show and we see it as a gesture of defiance to the
government that had rejected both his Studio and his
Burial; indeed it was, as Champfleury wrote at the time,
"an incredibly audacious act" 4 . Our focus on the gesture
fits in well with modem political imperatives, the heroicization
of the individual standing alone against an unjust
state. The issues embodied in Courbet's gesture,
Individualism, Self-confidence, Defiance, Genius, are
all qualities which define the modern - usually male -
hero. They are also, however, qualities which define the
self-made man of early capitalism, the entrepreneur.
FIG. 2. - Title Page, Catalogue of Courbet's 1855 Exhibition.
GAZETTE DES BEAUX-ARTS
This latterlreferent has been largely ignored by art historians,
but both interpretations, defiant hero and entrepreneur,
should be explored, for in the nineteenth
century, they were by no means mutually exclusive.
To begin to see Courbet's exhibitionism as his contemporarie''s
would have seen it, we will have to understand
firstl, the exhibition structure as they saw it,
second, traditional exhibition sites as they understood
them, and third, the decorum of exhibitions at that time,
for Courbet's gesture could only assume meaning
against the commonly accepted fabric of expectations
and procedures. In giving the broad outlines of these
issues, it trust be stressed that, although I am here focusing
on the negative, contemporary opinion held
various attitudes, both positive and negative, towards
each.
Throu0out most of the nineteenth century, the major
event in I-Irench exhibition practice was the Salon, the
annual, sometimes biennial, exhibition of contemporary
art. Until the 1789 Revolution, it had operated as a monopoly,
controlling French artistic life and careers. Only
members Of the Academy could participate and alternative
exhibitions were suppressed. The Academy had
been founded and was maintained as the Government
agency in charge of aesthetics: its members received
salaries a~d studios, and State commissions were originally
reserved for them. Academicians had, however,
elevated their status from that of artisans by rejecting
all hints f commerce and so, in the Academic Salon
of the An ien R6gime, artists did not exhibit works for
sale but "consented to show to a limited public some
pictures commissioned in advance for a specific destination"
5 . !,,Although in reality many Academicians
worked inja variety of modes, this elite attitude towards
art production survived well into the nineteenth century,
defining o~e pole of the spectrum of attitudes towards
exhibition Ipractice. That pole can be summed up in the
word exposition; in both English and French it preserved
thelconnotation of a didactic, morally instructive
show. The word exhibition, on the other hand, while
meaning lin English simply a show, assumed in
nineteenth] century France a pejorative connotation of
ostentation and immodesty. A commercial enterprise,
such as a
as would
hibitionist
hop window display, would be an exhibition,
rsonal behaviour we today would label ex-
This negative attitude towards anything
commercial derived from traditional aristocratic disdain
for corn*rce, which, in the nineteenth century, was
identified ]with England, the leading commercial power
among nations; hence the pejorative use of the English
word exhibition 7. Needless to say, conservative critics
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described Courbet's 1855 show as an "exhibition" and
not an "exposition". Courbet himself provoked this by
heading his own catalogue EXHIBITION ET VENTE
(fig. 2) "Exhibition and Sale", a title more fitting for
a display of furniture or rugs than of high art s .
After the 1789 Revolution, the Academy had lost its
monopoly over the Salon, which was then opened, in
principle at least, to independent artists. Nonetheless,
the Academy continued to maintain that it was degrading
to make a direct appeal to the public to sell pictures,
and that true artists did not produce easel paintings but
worked on commission for Church and State. The young
Courbet made his entrance to the Salon during the
troubled years of the 1840s when the Academy controlled
the Salon Jury, rejecting works by artists even as
prominent as Delacroix. By the 1848 Revolution, out
of eighteen paintings Courbet had submitted to the
Salon, only two had been accepted.
The 1830s and 1840s were the years in which conservatives
began to criticize the Salon in language
which continued throughout the century as an infallible
indicator of conservative politica 9 . Ingres stated repeatedly:
"The Salon is no longer anything more than
a bazaar, where mediocrity displays itself with impudence"
i0. E.J. Delecluze, the leading conservative critic,
echoed his sentiments: "The Salons in the Louvre have
assumed, more and more each year, the character of a
bazaar, where each merchant is obliged to present the
most varied and bizarre objects in order to provoke and
satisfy the fantasies of his customers" Il . Art historians
have largely ignored the significance of these code
words: exhibition, market, picture shop, bazaar (exhibition,
marche, boutique de tableaux, bazar) pejorative
words never used by critics supportive of what we call
the avant-garde.
Conservatives believed that art was inherently aristocratic
and elitist and that, under a democratic political
regime, mediocrity would reign. Education, they insisted,
was the only legitimate purpose for art, history
painting its only legitimate vehicle, and Academicians
its only legitimate practitioners; the habitus of such art
was the church, the public monument, the museum or
the aristocratic private gallery. The enemy for them was
the bourgeois preference for art as decoration or as commodity.
Such art, they felt, was trivial and commercial,
only fit to be sold at bazaars and market places. Their
language was anachronistic, however, for, as capitalism
leveloped, the site of art distribution became increasngly
the commercial art gallery or the auction house.
through this politico-aesthetic language, of bazaars and
)icture shops, of mediocrity and aristocracy, a political
COURBET'S EXHIBITIONISM 25 5
la do d. Yon E:poeiW~e anlyeraeile, Cooabet Re dtoeioe ! lal-mama
quolquaa rdeompewa Lle~ mfritfea, on prlsence rune multitude choide,
compacts de M. Bra et ton ehiso. -
FIG. 3. - BERTALL in the Journal pour tire, 12 January 1856.
system - democracy I-and an economic system - capitalism
- was being criticized: Courbet, through his 1855
show, symbolized bh institutions.
It is clear that 11855 the two poles of the Salon
were, on the right, elevated, academic exhibition as
close as possible tot the ideals of history painting and
the Ancien Mgime.lOn the left there was the popular
Salon, full of inde p ,~ ndept artists striving to appeal to
the public in order to sell their work. But if, in fact,
the other pole fromIthe aristocratic closed pre-Revolutionary
Salon was tolbe the open, somewhat democratic
and independent Sal n, where does that place Courbet's
pavilion ? When con ervatives referred to a bazaar, they
were both exaggera ing and speaking metaphorically;
Courbet intentional, produced the very image of their
nightmare, but not i the quaint, sentimentalizing imagery
of a bygone e och, of marche and bazar, but in
the contemporary wo Id of burgeoning mass culture and
commercialism - thel art exhibition as store.

25 6
To place Courbet's 1855 show, we must understand
how rare any individual shows were in France. The most
common examples of these events were the posthumous
shows organized for recently deceased Academicians
and held in prestigious locations such as the Ecole itself.
Galleries at this time were still picture shops displaying
and selling a variety of work by a variety of
artists. Artists occasionally held their own shows in
their studios, as David did in 1799 and Horace Vernet
in 1822, but, by being held in their studios, these shows
preserved the dignity of hiO art events, even when they
were intended as protest t . Courbet's 1855 show has
always been identified with this tradition, a protest
against the Exposition Jury's refusal of his two major
pictures, The Artist's Studio and A Burial at Ornans
(figs. 12 and 13). And yet even before he submitted his
pictures to the Jury' he had informed Nieuwerkerke, the
Intendant des Beaux-Arts, that he was hoping to mount
a private exhibition to compete with the Universal Ex-
GAZETTE DES BEAUX-ARCS
position, land he had dropped several hints to his patron
Alfred Blruyas that such a show (which he wanted
Bruyas to subsidize) was in the offing l 3. One could
argue that he anticipated that his pictures would be rejected,
but it must also be acknowledged that he very
much wanted, from the beginning, to hold this show
and to hold it on a site identified with the distribution
of art and not its production, in other words, to hold it
as a commercial enterprise. Indeed he had already made
two previlous attempts in this direction in 1850, in Besanrgon
and in Dijon, the first in a market hall, the second
in mouse that also held a cafe. In both cases he
had plastered the town with posters advertising his show
and had charged a fifty centime admission fee t4 . Riat
quotes him as feeling that the peasantry of Omans had
thought he was an idiot because he had let them see
his works! for free, "which evidently proves it's silly to
have a kind heart, for it merely deprives one of funds
without enriching others in spirit or purse. To be free,
"Lis 0Z gBAID®S4lltflI5
4.Tmm wjb~ W. lost I M-11
FIG. 4. - J. JOURDAN, Le Palais de l'Industrie, Tutgis Editeur, Paris, 1855.
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eople want to pay, so that their judgment won't be
Hayed by gratitude; they are right. I want to learn and
I'll be so ruthless that I'll give everyone the right
15 .
tell me the most cruel truths"
This leads to my second point, the issue of a suitable
)cation for art exhibitions. The annual Salon took place
I the Louvre until 1848 when, evicted from the
tuseum, it began a nomadic existence l 6. Pressure had
egun to mount in the 1830s to evict it from the Louvre,
Iostly coming from conservatives who felt that art
,hich increasingly rejected tradition had no right to par-
Ike of the elevated provenance associated with that
tuseum. The Salons of 1849, 1850-51, 1852, were held
1 the Tuileries and in the Palais-Royal; 1853 presented
rtists with the worst disappointment of all, for that
ear's Salon was held in temporary buildings surround-
Ig the Imperial furniture warehouse at Menus-Plaisirs
i northern Paris. During these years there was con-
,nual talk of suppressing the Salon altogether; Ingres
ad actually recommended such a course when he
:stified before the 1848 Commission permanente des
ieaux-Arts: "In order to remedy this overflow of me-
. iocrities, which has resulted in there no longer being
French School, this banality which is a public misortune,
which afflicts taste, and which overwhelms
he administration whose resources it absorbs to no
vail, it would be necessary to give up expositions..." 17
tumors and uncertainty ran rife through the artists'
ommunity. Would there continue to be a Salon ? If so,
vhere would it be held ? The very future of contem-
>orary art seemed to be at stake during these years, so
'.ourbet's carnival tent would not seem very funny to
hose who feared that contemporary art might end up
xactly there.
Art galleries as we know them were still in their inancy
in the first half of the century. In 1843 the critic
.outs Peisse wrote: "Outside the Louvre there would
Io Ion Rer be a Salon, there would be only picture
,hops" i8. Galleries were then indeed picture shops seling,
indiscriminately, art supplies, curios, and small
>ictures from the lower categories of art - genre, land-
:cape, still life l9 . The common conservative complaint
hat the Salon had become a bazaar or a picture shop
,howed that, in fact, these institutions were seen as the
mly alternative to the museum. So the two poles on
he exhibition spectrum were the Louvre, for exposiions
of educational, historical art, and the picture shop
'or exhibitions of commercially viable, decorative art.
knd yet art dealers at this time were not interested in
)old entrepreneurial initiatives, such as the promotion
Ind marketing of a trademarked product, namely the
COURBET'S EXHIBITIONISM 257
FIG. 5. - Auguste BELIN. "Sortie du Bat de 1' Opdra", Journal
amu$ant, January 1859.
b¢uf 6wt la r~iarrac qiu est tratnh pat lea labor
FIG. 6. - Le Monde Renverse, Pellerin Imprimeur, Epinal, 1829.

25 8
t

in France. It was only because of David's great celebrity,
and the extreme curiosity that his work aroused,
that the public accepted a practice which is repugnant
to all our French customs. Although this mode of exposition
succeeded in that David earned 20,000 francs,
he was harshly criticized, and ever since no artist has
dared try it again"23 . In the heated polemics accompanying
the introduction of admission fees at the 1855 Universal
Exposition, the standard objection was to stress
that, under the longstanding policy of noblesse oblige,
a benevolent state owed to its citizens free access to
those institutions considered spiritually and morally
uplifting, such as churches, schools, libraries, public
monuments, and expositions. Charging admission fees,
it was feared, would lower art exhibitions to the level
of popular entertainment, like theatres 24. Courbet, however,
blatantly moved art into this sphere of commercial
entertainment and self-promotion, with his pavilion
advertising his own name G. Courbet (visible in
COURBET'S EXHIBITIONISM 25 9
FIG. 9. - Gustave COURBET. Les Demoiselles de Village, Salon of 1852. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of Harry Payne
Bingham, 1940.
fig. 14), as prominently as did the bold red signatures
on his paintings 25 . Charles Perrier, the critic for L'Artiste,
commented Iveryone has seen Monsieur Courbet's
poster with it$ huge lettering plastered over the
walls of Paris, next o street performers and quack doctors,
inviting the pu~lic to come and pay a franc to see
his exhibition of tlorty pictures of his own work26 .
Bertall's cartoon (fig. 3) "At the end of the Universal
Exposition, Courbet! awards himself some well-merited
honors" criticizes the artist both for commercialism (the
receipt box is prominently displayed) and for immodesty
(he is awardingI himself a laurel wreath). The critic
Ernest Gebauer attacked Courbet in 1855 thus: "M.
Courbet, not satisfied with having eleven pictures in the
Universal Expositio , indulged himself by setting up his
own special exhibition a few steps from Palais des
Beaux-Arts" 27. In other words Courbet's show manifested
the requisite commercialism, ostentation, and immodesty
which defined it as an exhibition.

26 0
In addition to the commerce of the picture shop,
Courbet's 1855 show also recalled the outdoor fairs, the
immediate predecessors of the resolutely non-commercial,
dignified Salon exhibitions. These lowly antecedents
to the Salon continued to be an unwelcome
memory of the past in the collective memory of Academicians
and conservatives in general; hence their
criticism of the Salon as a bazaar. Joined to this, however,
was an even more frightening spectre of the future:
the commercialization and commodification of art
which, they feared, would happen under capitalism. In
other words, to conservatives Courbet's show represented
the worst of both the old and the new systems
of art distribution. For us today it is less shocking and
more laudable to see Courbet raging against an unjust
State than to see him making a crassly commercial gesture.
But to nineteenth century conservatives, it was the
disturbing commercialism of his gesture rather than its
political content that was shocking. After all, in 1855
the political opposition came from both left and right;
with the repeated revolutions and counter-revolutions
which had shaken France since 1789, almost everyone
had had a taste of being in the political opposition at
some time.
II. Courbet's Exhibitionism as Carnival
GAZETTE DES BEAUX-ARTS
Although I have been reading Courbet's exhibitionism
as a function of capitalism and the new economic
and social order, this should be underscored by a second
level of interpretation which compounds the first: Courbet's
exhibitionism as carnival. If the Louvre, the Palace
FIG. 10. - Gustave COURBET. Le Retour de la
Confirence, 1862. Destroyed.
of ings, represented the aristocratic tradition, and the
Palace of Industry (fig. 4) at the Universal Exposition
represented the challenge launched by capitalism, then
Co rbet's pavilion can be seen as disruptive of both
orders. Carnival, of course, did exactly that. Carnival,
thel period from Twelfth Night (6 January) to Ash Wedne0ay
of each year, culminating in the revelry of Mardi
Gras, celebrated the world-upside-down, the reversal of
thel normal order of events. It was filled with feasting
and drunkenness, dancing and orgies, masquerades and
street theatre. Inversion was its basic premise, satire and
pa ody its means: the lowly were raised up and the
mi hty were abased; social, political, and moral order
cold be safely transgressed. Carnival during the 1830s
an~i 40s had become increasingly political; no one at
-century had forgotten that the February Revolution
of': 1848 had taken place during Carnival and that the
two events had been intertwined in a grotesquely surrealist
spectacle: carnival processions turned into mob
2s
ri
N
U
atmosphere, must be seen as the very antithesis of that,
rigidly controlled and organized. This fact is important
in',order to understand the contrast presented by Courbek's
pavilion, at the very entrance to that Exposition;
it I,fulfilled the carnivalesque function of deflating the
pretentiousness of the mighty. And his gesture was
indeed understood: Le Figaro described Courbet's pavilion,
facing the Palais des Beaux-Arts of the Universal
Exposition, as "Guignol's theatre next to La Scala of
M lan ..z9 , ts, carnival floats into insurrectionary wagons
poleon III had certainly not forgotten and his 1855
iversal Exposition, far from having a carnivalesque
that is, the Punch and Judy show, a satirical
and subversive institution of popular culture, juxtaposed
to! its antithesis, the high art opera house.

COURBET'S EXHIBITIONISM
Ever since Meyer Shapiro's brilliant article of 1941
"Courbet's Popular Imagery" 30, we have been aware of
the relationship between Courbet's art and popular images.
I would like to take that a step further and propose
that Courbet's interest was not just in a generalized
popular culture of Epinal prints and the customs of the
rural bourgeoisie, but, with his instinct for the "most
complete expression of a real thing" 31, Courbet focused
on the most subversive and threatening aspect of popular
culture, the only one that had both political overtones
and a revolutionary history, namely carnival.
The political carnivalesque informs Courbet's 1855
show. When Courbet wrote that his show "will really
be enough to make Paris dance on its head", his statement
conflated the two major features of carnival, revelry
(fig. 5) with the image of the world-upside-down
(fig. 6). The fear which Champfleury described as the
conservative response to Courbet's show ("It's a scandal,
it's anarchy, it's art dragged through the mud, it's
a fairground spectacle") 32 was identical to their fear of
carnival when all social order was transgressed. Taxile
Delord, in Le Charivari described Courbet as a carnival
barker shouting to artists to follow his example and
abandon official expositions; 33 Gavarni drew just such
an image of this popular carnival type as the introductory
plate of "Les Debardeurs" (fig. 7).
Daniel Stern (Marie d'Agoult) published an account
of the invasion of the Tuileries in February 1848 which
gives the flavor of Carnival/Revolution where
masquerade and parody combine. Daumier's cartoon of
the Paris gamin on the throne (fig. 8) is based on this
incident. She wrote: "The children dress themselves up
in velvet robes, turn the golden drapery fringe into belts,
and pieces of tapestry into phrygian caps. The women
pour over their hair the perfume that they find on the
princesses' tables. They rouge their cheeks, cover their
shoulders with lace and furs, decorate their heads with
sprays of jewels and flowers; they deck themselves out
with a kind of burlesque taste parodying extravagant
dress" 34 . Compare this to Courbet's Young Ladies of the
Village (fig. 9), criticized by Du Pays in L'/llustration
as "the most anti-picturesque, the most unpleasant thing
in the world: the pretention to elegance flaunted by the
common people"35 . Even in conservative critics'
frequent attacks on Courbet as the "apostle of ugliness",
one can read the world-upside-down, for ugliness was
the reversal of beauty, which to conservatives was the
proper sphere of art.
I am proposing that, if we look at Courbet in the
light of carnival, we can better understand the hysteria
his works provoked in conservative circles. Parody and
26 1
inversion assume a new and sinister dimension in the
raucus Return from the Conference (fig. 10) featuring
drunken priests, or the oversized Beggar's Alms
(fig. 11) which the critic Chesneau claimed represented
France 36 . Courbet constantly reversed the traditional
hierarchical relationship of pictorial category to size: in
paintings such as fhe Stonebreakers, The Grain Sifters,
After Dinner at Ornans, ordinary people are elevated
to a size and status traditionally reserved for gods and
heroes. Parody nd inversion proved more subtle,
though equally disturbing, in A Burial at Ornans
(fig. 12), whose 'enter is the void of death, and whose
red-nosed beadles seem to mock the solemnity of the
event. In the light of Klaus Herding's reading of The
Artist's Studio (fi 13) as an adhortatio ad principem,
the traditional exportation to the ruler, Linda Nochlin
has recently suggested that we might also read this as
world-upside-do n, with the "normal" order of the
world reversed: t~e monarch must now listen and learn,
while the artist & ants the benefit of his example to the
ruler 37 .
FIG. 11. - Gusta~e COURBET. L'Aumone d'un mendiant d
Ornans, 1868. Buprell Collection, Glasgow Museums and Art
Galleries.

262 GAZETTE DES BEAUX-A(ZTS
FIG. 12. - Gustave COURBET. Un Enterrement d Orn4ns, 1849. Paris, Music d'Orsay.
Carnival existed at mid-century as a constellation of that carnival still contained. He created works which,
attitudes and modes of behaviour; Courbet knew just like time bombs, would explode in politically and aeshow
to exploit, under the guise of humor, the threat theticalllY conservative circles.
FIG. 13. - Gustave COURBET, L'Atelier du peintre, alligorie rielle diterm'linant une phase de sept annies de ma vie artistique,
1855. Paris, Muscle d'O0say.
Fr
fry
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O
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1
1
1

FIG. 1 4. - C. THURSTON THOMPSON. "Fireman's Station and Division Wall be ween the Picture Gallery and Sugar Refinery",
from R.J. Bingham and C.T. Thompson, Paris Exhibition, 1855, Tome I, No. XXXVIII. By Courtesy of the Board of Trustees
of the Victoria & Albert Museum, London.
To his conservative audience, Courbet's 1855 show
was certainly an exhibition. He travestied every aspect
of high art practice, ostentatiously and immodestly, and
did so with publicly avowed commercial intent. His
contemporaries saw Courbet the carnival barker presiding
over a disturbing vision of the world-upside-down,
parodying the high, the mighty and the respectable; at
the same time, they saw the spectre he presented of the
COURBET'S EXHIBITIONISM
future of art'', in the capitalist commodity system. For to
true nineteenth century conservatives, the coming of the
new bourgeois economic and social order was the
world -ups id -down. What looks like a contradiction to
us today was, in fact, a single nightmare vision in 1855,
the defiant 11ero and the entrepreneur.
P.M.

264
This research was supported in part by a grant from T e
City University of New York PSC-CUNY Research Award Pr~
gram. An earlier version was read at the Symposium "Courbet
Reconsidered", held at the Brooklyn Museum in 1988 in connection
with the exhibition of the same title.
I would like to express my gratitude to the photography
historian Glenn Willumson who first discovered the photograph
of Courbet's 1855 pavilion and made a copy print Of
it available to me, to the historian Ann Ilan-Alter who is culrrently
working on a study of carnival and without whose
generosity I would not have been able to develop these i deaIIP~' ,
and to Bernard Silve and Charles Daudon who helped with
the transcription of the contract for Courbet's pavilion.
1. Courbet to Alfred Bruyas, n.d., No. 10 in Courbet letters
at the Biblioth6que nationale, Yb3 1739 (8), published n
"Lettres inddites" L'Olivier, Revue de Nice, 8 (septembre-o -
tobre 1913), 485-90. "Je vois ddjA d'ici tine tente 6norme av c
tine settle colonne au milieu, pour murailles des charpent s
recouvertes de toiles peintrs, le tout month stir tine estrad .
Puis des municipaux de louage, tin homme en habit noir tena t
le bureau, vis-'A-vis les Cannes et parapluies, puis deux ou tro s
gargons de salle... 11 y a vraiment de quoi faire danser Par S
Stir la tete, ce sera sans contredit la plus forte com6die q~i
aura de jouer de notre temps; it y a des gens qui en tombero6t
malades, c'est stir".
2. See Patricia MAINARDI, Art and Politics of the Second
Empire. The Universal Expositions of 1855 and 1867, New
Haven/London, 1987, 92-94.
3. Augustin-Joseph Du PAYS, "Beaux-Arts. Expositi n
Universelle", L'Illustration, 28 juillet 1855; QUILLENBOIS, " a
Peinture rdaliste de M. Courbet", L'Illustration, 21 juill t
1855.
4. CHAMPFLEURY (Jules Husson), "Du R6alisme, Lettre ii
Madame Sand", L'Artiste, 2 septembre 1855, 2-5 : "tine audace
incroyable".
5. This classic defense of the Salon of the Ancien R6gi e
was formulated by L6on de LABORDE in his L'Application d s
arts d l'industrie, Vol. 8 of the Commission frangaise stir I'i -
dustrie des nations, Londres, 1851, Travaux de la Commissi
frangaise stir I'industrie des nations, 8 vols., Paris, 1856,
224-25.
6. See "Exhibition", and "Exposition", in Paul ROBERt,
Dictionnaire alphabetique et analogique de la langue frangaise,
Paris, 1955, s.v.; Centre National de la Recherche Scie
tifique, Tresor de la langue frangaise. Dictionnaire de
langue du XIX ` et du XX` siecle (1789-1960), Paris, 198
s.v.; Ferdinand BRUNOT, Histoire de la langue frangaise, 193
S.V.
7. See Koenraad A. SwART, The Sense of Decadence i
Nineteenth Century France, The Hague, 1964, 55-56.
8. Gustave COURBET, Exhibition et vente de 40 tablea x
et 4 dessins de l'o'uvre de M. Gustave Courbet, avenue Mot
taigne, 7, Champs-Elysdes, Paris, 1855.
GAZETTE OES BEAUX-ARTS
NOTES
9. L6on ROSENTHAL pointed this out in his Du Romantisme
au realisme, Paris, 1987, 3f, 37ff, 60; published 1914. Later
Academicians whose writing illustrates these attitudes include
Charles BEULt, "Du Principe des expositions", Causeries stir
Part, Paris, 1867, and Georges LAFENESTRE, "Le Salon et ses
vicissitudes", Revue des Deux Mondes 45 (1 mai 1881) : 104-
35.
10. Jean-Louis FoUCHt, "L'Opinion d'Ingres stir le Salon",
La Chronique des arts et de la curiosite, 14 mars 1908, 99.
"L'exposition nest plus qu'un bazar o6 la mddiocrit6 s'6tale
avec impudence".
11. E.J. DELECLUZE, Louis David, son ecole et son temps,
ed. Jean-Pierre Mouilleseaux, Paris, 1983, 325; published
1855. "Les salons du Louvre ont pris d'annde en ann6e le
caractdre d'un bazar, oit chaque marchand s'efforce de pr6senter
les objets les plus vari6s et les plus bizarres, pour provoquer
et satisfaire les fantaisies des chalands".
12. Jacques-Louis DAvID, Le tableau des Sabines, expose
publiquement au palais national des sciences et des arts, salle
de la ci-devant academie d'architecture par le citoyen David,
Paris, an VIII (1799), 2; Deloyne 591, Vol. XXI : 631-648.
MM.JouY et JAY, Salon d'Horace Vernet. Analyse historique
et pittoresque de quarante-cinq tableaux exposes chez lui en
1822, Paris, 1822.
13. Several letters to Alfred Bruyas in 1854 and early 1855
raise the question of a private exhibition; see COURBET,
L'Olivier (cited n. 1).
14. Georges RIAT, Gustave Courbet, peintre, Paris, 1906,
82. T.J. CLARK in his Image of the People. Gustave Courbet
and the Second French Republic 1848-1851, Greenwich, CT,
1973, 85, states that Courbet held his Dijon exhibition in the
caf6 but cites no source.
15. RIAT, Ibid., 82. This seems to be a letter from Courbet
to his friend Francis Wey, but Riat's text is unclear as to
whether this was a written, spoken or fictionalized account.
"ce qui prouve 6videmment que le grand ceeur, c'est de la
niaiserie, par le fait que vous vous privez de moyens d'action
sans enrichir les autres, ni par Fesprit, ni par la bourse. Afin
d'etre libre, I'homme veut payer, que son jugement ne soit
pas influenc6 par Ia.reconnaissance; it a raison. J'ai envie de
m'instruire, et pour cela, je serai si brutal que je donnerai 3
chacun la force de me dire les vdritds les plus cruelles".
16. For a detailed discussion, see Patricia MAINARDI, "The
Eviction of the Salon from the Louvre", Gazette des Beaux-
Arts, juillet-ao0t 1988, 31-40.
17. Jean-Louis FoucHt, "L'Opinion d'Ingres stir le Salon.
Proc6s-verbaux de la commission permanente des Beaux-Arts
(1848-1849)", La Chronique des arts et de la curiosite, 14
mars 1908, 98-99. "Pour rem6dier A ce d6bordement des m6diocrit6s
qui fait qu'il n'y a plus d'Ecole; 3 cette banalit6 qui
est tin malheur public, qui afflige le gout, qui accable 1'administration
dont elle absorbe les ressources sans rdsultat, it
faudrait renoncer aux expositions...".

18. Louis PEISSE, "Le Salon de 1843", Revue des Deux-
Mondes, n.s. 2 (1843) : 104. "Hors du Louvre, il n'y aurait
plus de salon; il n'y aurait que des boutiques de tableaux".
19. See Nicholas GREEN, "Circuits of production, Circuits
of Consumption: The Case of Mid-Nineteenth Century
French Art Dealing", Art Journal, Spring 1989, 29-34, and
Linda WHITELEY, "Art et commerce d'art en France avant
1'epoque impressioniste", Romantisme 4, (1983): 65-75.
20. Courbet to Bruyas, letter No. 7, n.d., in the BN collection
and L'Olivier (cited n. 1), 478-79; "Je grnene
100 000 francs d'un seul coup". Courbet to Bruyas, n.d., in
L'Olivier, 479-80; "Je vais passer pour un monstre mais je
gagnerai 100 000 francs, d'apr6s toute prdvision". In an earlier
letter to Bruyas, n.d., No. 10 in the BN collection, Courbet
projects only 40,000 francs profit; see L'Olivier, 478-79.
21. Courbet to Bruyas, n.d., in L'Olivier (cited n. 1), 479-80.
22. David (cited n. 12), 2. "De nos joues, cette pratique
est observde en Angleterre, oil elle est appelde exhibition".
23. DELtCLUZE (cited n. 11), 212-213. "Le mode d'exposition
adopte par David parut une innovation bien plus extraordinaire
que l'idde de prdsenter ses personnages nus. L'artiste,
a~-ant entendu parler des exhibitions telles qu'elles se pratiquent
en Angleterre, c'est-3-dire en faisant payer un prix
d'entrde a la porte, rdsolut de faire 1'essai de cette mdthode
en France. Il ne fallut riens moins que la grande cdldbritd dont
jouissait David et la curiositd extreme que faisait naitre son
ouvrage, pour que I'on se conformat 3 un usage qui rdpugne
a toutes les habitudes frangaises. Bien que I'on se soumit A
cc mode d'exposition, puis qu'il rapporta vingt mille francs,
on le blama gdndralement, et depuis, aucun artiste n'a osd y
recourir de nouveau ".
24. See MAINARDI, (cited n. 2), 44-46, 116.
25. A.J. Du PAYS wrote that RtALISME, in large letters,
,A-as written across the doors, but it cannot be seen in the photograph;
see Du PAYS (cited n. 3), 72.
26. Charles PERRIER, "Du Rdalisme, Lettre a M. le Directeur
de 1'Artiste", L'Artiste, 14 octobre 1855, 86. "Tous le
monde a vu, placardde aux murs de Paris en compagnie des
saltimbanques et de tous les marchands d'orvidtan et dcrite
en caracteres gigantesques, l'affiche de M. Courbet, apotre
du rdalisme, i nvitant le public a aller ddposer la somme de
un franc A Pexhibition de quarante tableaux de son muvre".
27. Ernest GEBAOER, Les Beaux-Arts d 1'Exposition Universelle
de 1855, Paris, 1855, 133. "M. Courbet, non content
Tavoir eu onze tableaux admis A dExposition universelle,
s'est passd la fantaisie d'une exhibition spdciale, A deux pas
du palais des Beaux-Arts".
28. For carnival during this period, see Alain FAURE, Paris
Carente-prenant. Du carnaval d Paris au XlX e siecle 1800-
COURBET'S EXHIBITIONISM 26 5
1914, Paris, 1978; the February 1848 Revolution is discussed
114-21. The basic work on carnival remains M.M. BAKHTIN,
Rabelais and his World, trans. H. Iswolsky, Cambridge, MA,
1968.
29. Ajuguste VILLEMOT, "Chronique parisien", Le Figaro,
8 juillet k855, 2. "Le thdatre de Guignol a c6td de la Scala
de Milan'.
30. Meyer SCHAPIRO, "Courbet and Popular Imagery", in
his Modern Art. 19th and 20th Centuries. Selected Papers,
New Yore , ',
1978, 47-85. -
31. See COURBET's letter to a group of students, Paris,
25 d6cernbre 1861; published in Le Courrier du dimanche, 29
ddcembr 1861, reprinted in Courbet raconte par lui-meme et
par ses mis, Geneva, 1950, Vol. 2: 204-7. "L'imagination
dans Fart consiste A savoir trouver Pexpression la plus
complete ',1d'une chose existante, mais jamais e supposer ou 3
crder cette chose meme".
32. CHAMPFLEURY (cited n. 4), I.
33. T~xile DELORD, "Exposition des Beaux-Arts. IV. L'annexe
Co rbet", Le Charivari, 4 juillet 1855.
34. Daniel STERN (Marie d'Agoult), Histoire de la Revolution
de~1848, Paris, 1850, vol. I: 140-41. "Les enfants se
revetent e robes de chambre en velours, se font des ceintures
avec des Ifranges d'or et des torsades de rideaux, des bonnets
phrygien$ avec des morceaux de tentures. Les femmes font
ruisseler dans leurs cheveux les essences parfumdes qu'elles
trouvent ~ur les tables des princesses. Elles fardent leurs joues,
couvrent I leurs dpaules de dentelles et de fourrures, ornent
leurs tet s d'aigrettes, de bijoux et de fleurs; elles se composent
a , ec un certain gout burlesque des parures extravagantes".
35. J. Du PAYS (cited n. 3), 72; on this painting, see
Patricia AINARDI, "Gustave Courbet's Second Scandal : Les
Demoise les de Village", Arts Magazine 53 (January 1979)
95-109 : "c'est-a-dire ce qu'il y a de plus anti-pittoresque, de
plus ddp aisant au monde : les prdtentions de 1'dldgance affichdes
ar les lourdaudes".
36. rnest CHESNEAU, "Salon de 1868", Le Constitutionnel,
16 j in 1868. tmile Zola also commented on Courbet's
"bad joke" in this painting in his "Salon de 1868"; see $mile
ZOLA, Salons, F.W.J. Hemmings, Robert J Niess, eds.,
Geneva /Paris, 1959, 136-37.
37. inda NOCHLIN, "CourbetIs Real Allegory: Rereading
'The Pai ter's Studio"', in Sarah FAUNCE and Linda NOCHLIN,
Courbet I Reconsidered, The Brooklyn Museum, New York,
1988, 1 7 -41; Klaus HERDING, "Das Atelier des Malers -
Treffpun t der Welt and Ort der Versohnung", Realismus als
Widerspruch: Die Wirklichkeit in Courbets Malerei, Klaus
Herding,', ed., Frankfurt-am-Main, 223-47.