VAH 1042A – Art, Science and Technology Gleaners and The Stonebreakers Visual & Performing Arts Essay

The Gleaners and The Stonebreakers
Name
Course
Professor
Date
The Gleaners and The Stonebreakers
Introduction
The Stonebreakers by Gustave Courbet and The Gleaners by Jean-Francois Millet are examples of French art in the Realism era which flourished in the nineteenth century and conveyed an honest and objective vision of the working class. The emergence of Realism occurred during the aftermath of the Revolution of 1848 as French society struggled for democratic reform. The Realists reformed art by deviating from the idealized classicism of academic art and concentrating on the daily activities of the working class as the subjects of their art. Realism focused on direct observation of the modern world rather than the exotic themes of Romanticism.[Johnson, Beverly Elmyra. "THE RELEVANCE OF ART." Creative Renewal for Scholarship (1987): 64.]
Background
Gustave Courbet (1819-1877) was the leading proponent of Realism. He challenged the supremacy of history painting recommended at the state-sponsored art academy, Ecole des Beaux-Arts. The Stonebreakers and A Burial at Ornans were first works that Courbet exhibited at the Paris Salons of 1849 and 1850. They were paintings of common people from the Courbet’s native region on a monumental scale previously used to alleviate the themes of history paintings. Some interpreted Courbet’s choice of contemporary subjects as a political threat to the authorities. For example, the Socialist philosopher Proudhon viewed The Stonebreakers as an “irony directed against our industrialized civilization … which is incapable of freeing man from the heaviest, most difficult, most unpleasant tasks, the eternal lot of the poor” . Courbet achieved a truthful and straightforward representation of rural life by going against the academic style and employing a simple style based on popular imagery, which many critics at the time saw as crude.[Nochlin, Linda. "Realism and Tradition in Art, 1848-1900 Sources and Documents." (1966).]
Jean Francois Millet (1814-1875) was also an artist in the same period as Courbet. He painted scenes of the rural life of peasants at work on a monumental scale. At the time, there was a migration of the majority of the French population to the industrialized cities from rural areas, and Millet left Paris for Barbizon and lived there until his death, close to the subjects of his paintings. The Gleaners honesty depicted rural poverty and created a scandal because of that. Although Millet’s work was more conservative than that of Courbet, some considered his choice of subject as politically subversive. Millet endowed his subjects with a sculptural presence that reflected his academic training. His work differed from that of Courbet I the way he generalized his figures giving his works a sentimental quality.
The Stonebreakers
The Stonebreakers (1849) was oil on canvas, 165 x 257 cm painting by Courbet. It was a controversial piece that that was eventually destroyed in the war, during the bombing of Dresden in 1945. The painting offended the academy and their style as well as the bourgeoisie.[Chu, Petra ten-Doesschate, ed. Courbet in perspective. Prentice-Hall, 1977.]
The painting depicted two figures in the back-brea...