PDF: A Chronology of Gustave Courbet`s THE STONEBREAKERS

tipped in plate
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A supplement to the exhibition, Critical Decor:What Works!
by Jeffrey Charles Henry Peacock
23 January - 2 March 2014
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A CHRONOLOGY OF GUSTAVE COURBET’S
THE STONEBREAKERS
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November 1849
Spring and Summer 1850
Letter to M. and Mme. Wey [Dijon,
July 31, 1850]
“That worked so well, imagine, in
Besançon, yes in Besançon, two
hundred and fifty persons produced
fifty centimes from their pockets, their
own pockets, imagine that!”
2. Concert Room of Les Halles, place de
l’Abondance, Besançon, Tuesday, 7 May
1850 open from 10 to 5.
1. At the Seminary Chapel at Ornans,
March/April 1850, no entrance fee was
charged.
While awaiting the opening of the
1850 Paris Salon, which had been
indefinitely delayed, Courbet organizes
3 private exhibitions of new work –
including The Stonebreakers and the
Funeral at Ornans.
Canvas badly primed..
This is the first painting Courbet
paints in the new studio his father has
placed at his disposal for the painting
of large canvases, in a house in Ornans.
While on the way to paint a landscape
at the Chateau de Saint-Denis, Courbet
notices two stonebreakers working
on the road near Masieres: an old
man-“le pere Gagey” – and a boy.
Struck by the poverty that the figures
engendered, Courbet decides to paint
them and arranges for them to pose
for him at his studio the following day.
After painting some preliminary oil
sketches..
Winter 1850/1851
October 1851
Spring 1855
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For this reason The Stonebreakers is
not among the works Courbet exhibits
at his ‘Pavillon du Réalisme’ which
includes the two rejected canvases and
41 other paintings.
The Stonebreakers entry no.2801 is
among the eleven paintings by Courbet
which are accepted by the jury for
the combined Salon of 1855 and the
Exposition Universale{The Funeral at
Ornans and the Studio having been
rejected.]
The Stonebreakers is exhibited at the
Exposition Bruxelles.
Due to repeated delays in opening the
Salon of 1850 it was declared that it
would be a joint Salon of 1850/51. The
exhibition opened on 30 December
1850, the first public was admitted on
3 January 1851. Since Courbet won
a medal in the Salon of 1849 all his
works are automatically accepted.
3. The exhibition in Dijon, at a rented
hall in a building that housed a
socialist café, is cancelled after 3 days
{because of the political question,
which exercised everyone’s mind.…}
Letter to M. and Mme. Wey [Dijon,
July 31, 1850]“As the room was costing
me ten francs a day, I felt it best to
pack my bags, even though I was
offered the foyer of a theatre, where I
should have gone in the first place…”
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1865
1867
1869
1871
1876
1882
May 1882 The Stonebreakers is entry
no. 36 at the “Exposition des oeuvres
de Gustave Courbet” held at the École
des Beaux-Arts in Paris.”
April-May 1876 “Exposition des
Casseurs de Pierres.” At 70, rue de
Rocheouart in Paris.
According to some sources {Aragon
& Fernier}, The Stonebreakers is
purchased in 1871 by M. Binant,
who will own the painting until
1904, when it is sold to the Dresden
Museum. However, catalogues of the
May 1882 and 1929 exhibitions at the
École des Beaux-Arts and Petit Palais,
respectively, as well as a letter Courbet
wrote in 1869, suggest that the painting
belonged to a M. Georges Petit.
The Stonebreakers is exhibited at
Munich.
The Stonebreakers is among the 136
works exhibited at Courbet’s private
show at the Rond du Pont de l’Alma.
It is bought by Laurent Richard for
16,000 francs. One commentator writes
20,000.
The Stonebreakers is one of the
paintings singled out for particular
attention by P.J Proudhon in his
book Du principe de L’art et de sa
destination sociale.
1889
1904
1929
1935
1944
1945.
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All traces of the painting are lost.
It is stated in the literature that the
painting was destroyed when a truck
carrying 154 paintings from one depot
to another, was caught in the bombing
of Dresden on the night of 13/14
February 1945. However the Staatliche
Kunstsammlungen Dresden report that
it was not part of that transport, and is
now considered missing, not destroyed.
1944 As the Russian army advances
from the east, art-work from the
Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden
are secured in 45 depots in the vicinity.
The Stonebreakers is moved to the
Wachau Castle.
December 1935 March 1936 The
Stonebreakers is entry no. 21 in the
Courbet exhibition at the Zurich
Kunsthalle.
May – June 1929 The Stonebreakers is
entry no. 36 at the “Exposition Gustave
Courbet” at the Petit Palais, Paris.
20 April 1904 At the sale of the
Binant collection, The Stonebreakers
is purchased for the Staatliche
Kunstsammlungen at Dresden for
the sum of 50,000 francs by Herr
Woldemar von Seidlitz
1889 At the Exposition Universalle
Paris, The Stonebreakers is entry no.
201 of the paintings and sculpture in
the Palais des Beaux-Arts.
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13/14 February 1945
The first of the British aircraft took
off at around 17:20 hours CET for the
700-mile (1,100 km) journey. This was
a group of Lancasters from Bomber
Command’s No._83_Squadron, No.5
Group, acting as Pathfinders, or flare
force, whose job it was to find Dresden
and drop magnesium parachute flares,
known to the Germans as “Christmas
trees”, to light up the area for the
bombers. The next set of aircraft to
leave England were the twin-engined
Mosquito marker planes who would
identify the target areas and drop
[1,000-pound target indicators (TIs)
which gave off a red glow for the
bombers to aim at ] The attack was
to be centred on the Ostragehege
sports stadium, next to the city’s
medieval Altstadt (old town), with its
congested, and highly combustible,
timbered buildings. The main bomber
force, called “Plate Rack”, took off
shortly after the Pathfinders. This was
a group of 254 Lancasters carrying
500 tons of high explosives and 375
tons of incendiaries, or fire bombs.
There were 200,000 incendiaries in
all, with the high-explosive bombs
ranging in weight from 500 pounds
to 4,000 pounds — the so-called
two-ton “cookies”, also known as
“blockbusters,” because they had the
power to destroy a city block. The high
explosives were intended to rupture
water mains, and blow off roofs,
doors, and windows, creating an air
flow that would feed the fires caused
by the incendiaries that followed.
The Lancasters crossed into French
airspace near the Somme, then into
Germany just north of Cologne. At
22:00 hours, the force heading for
Böhlen split away from Plate Rack,
which turned south east toward the
Elbe. By this time, ten of the Lancasters
were out of service, leaving 244 to
continue to Dresden.
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The sirens started sounding in Dresden
at 21:51 (CET). Wing Commander
Maurice Smith, flying in a Mosquito,
gave the order to the Lancasters:
“Controller to Plate Rack Force:
Come in and bomb glow of red target
indicators as planned. Bomb the glow
of red TIs as planned.”. The first
bombs were released at 22:14, the
Lancasters flying in low at 8,000 feet
(2,400 m), with all but one Lancaster’s
bombs released within two minutes,
and the last one releasing at 22:22.
The fan-shaped area that was bombed
was 1.25 miles (2.01 km) long, and at
its extreme about 1.75 miles (2.82 km)
wide. The shape and total devastation
of the area was created by the bombers
of No. 5 Group flying over the head
of the fan Ostragehege stadium) on
prearranged compass bearings and
releasing their bombs at different
prearranged times. The second attack,
three hours later, was by Lancaster
aircraft of 1,3,6 and 8 Groups, 8 Group
being the Pathfinders. By now, the
thousands of fires from the burning
city could be seen more than 60 miles
(97 km) away on the ground, and 500
miles (800 km) away in the air, with
smoke rising to 15,000 feet (4,600 m).
The Pathfinders therefore decided to
expand the target, dropping flares on
either side of the firestorm, including
the Hauptbahnhof, the main train
station, and the Großer Garten, a
large park, both of which had escaped
damage during the first raid. The
German sirens sounded again at
01:05, but as there was practically no
electricity, these were small hand-held
sirens that were heard within only a
block. Between 01:21 and 01:45, 529
Lancasters dropped more than 1,800
tons of bombs.
CARTOONS
OF THE
STONEBREAKERS
Cham [Amédée-Charles-Henry, Comte de
Noé], (1818–1879)
A man of the world forced to dress as a peasant
to have his portrait painted by M.Courbet
Un homme du monde obligé de s’habiller
en paysan pour faire peindre son portrait
par M.Courbet
Revue Comique du Salon de 1851
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Cham [Amédée-Charles-Henry, Comte de
Noé], (1818–1879)
M.Courbet ayant observé que les peintres ses
confrères avaient eu jusqu’alors la coutume de
mettre les jambes dans les culottes qu’ils avaient
à peindre, a cru devoir s’affranchir de cette
routine. - Un pareil trait de génie est au-dessus
de tout éloge.
M.Courbet having observed that his fellow
painters had customarily put legs in the
trousers they had to paint, felt obliged to
get rid of this routine. - a stroke of genius
above all praise.
Le Charivari 1851
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Cham [Amédée-Charles-Henry, Comte de
Noé], (1818–1879)
Les Casseurs de pierres, remarquable toile... de
pantalons.
The Stonebreakers, Remarkable Canvas...of
Trousers
Revue Comique du Salon de 1851
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Cham [Amédée-Charles-Henry, Comte de
Noé], (1818–1879)
-Pourquoi donc, papa, qu’on appelle ça de la
peintre socialiste?
-Parbleu! parce qu’au lieu d’être de la peintre
riche, c’est de la pauvre peinture!...
Why do they call this painting socialistic,
Dad?
Parbleu! Because instead of being painting
for the rich,it’s poor painting!
Le Charivari 1851
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Cham [Amédée-Charles-Henry, Comte de
Noé], (1818–1879)
Democritisation de l’art
The Democritisation of Art
L’illustration, 21 July 1855
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Cham [Amédée-Charles-Henry, Comte de
Noé], (1818–1879)
M. Courbet ayant fait école, on ne trouvera
en 1852, en fait de peintures, rien que des
tableaux représentent des paysans.
With M.Courbet founding a School..
Le Charivari, 7 April 1851
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Cham [Amédée-Charles-Henry, Comte de
Noé], (1818–1879)
Récompense désernée a M. Courbet par le jury
de peintre.
Courbet’s prize, awarded by the painting
jury.
Le Charivari 4 May 1851
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Léonce Schérer (1827 -1876)
L’homme qui était un jour appelé à démolir la
Colonne devait commencer par être casseur de
pierres.
The man who one day would be called
upon to topple the Vendome Column began
as a Stonebreaker.
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DESCRIPTIONS
OF THE STONEBREAKERS
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That’s It!
Two stonebreakers of the department
of Doubs. That’s it! It is a subject with
very little appeal. To render it even more
unpleasant the artist has suppressed the
two heads of the poor laborers, that is to
say, the only things capable of preserving
the interest of such an empty subject.
The standing worker turns his back to us
and we see only his nape; the other who
kneels has his head hidden under his
straw hat. What happens to the principal
objects of a painting if they are not treated
with the importance that is evidently
accorded them, positioned with their
relative legitimate value, expressive of a
certain truth, and rendered with a vivacity
suitable to display the artist’s talent for
material execution? Instead of that wan
and ambiguous glimmer of light spread
throughout the scene, shouldn’t we feel
the full effect of sunlight that the painter
meant to put there, indicated by the cast
shadows that, however, do not sufficiently
achieve the aim of making it shine?
A.J. Dupays (?-?), “Salon
de 1850,” L’Illustration
31 January - 7 February
1851
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June 7, 1850
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The Alpha And The Omega, The Sunrise And The Sunset Of That Life Of Drudgery
An advertisement
for the exhibition of
the Stonebreakers in
Dijon.
Max Buchon (1818
-1869),
The painting of the Stonebreakers
represents two life-size figures, a child
and an old man, the alpha and the omega,
the sunrise and the sunset of that life
of drudgery. A poor young lad, between
twelve and fifteen years old, his head
shaven, scurvy, and stupid in the way
misery too often shapes the heads of the
children of the poor; a lad of fifteen years
old lifts with great effort an enormous
basket of stones, ready to be measured or
to be interspersed in the road. A ragged
shirt; trousers held in place by a brace
made of a rope, patched on the knees,
torn at the bottom, and tattered all over;
lamentable, down-at-heel shoes, turned
red by too much wear, like the shoes of
that poor worker you know: That sums up
the child.
To the right is the poor stonebreaker in
old sabots fixed up with leather, with an
old straw hat, worn by the weather, the
rain, the sun, and the dirt. His shaking
knees are resting on a straw mat, and he
is lifting a stonebreaker’s hammer with
all the automatic precision that comes
with long practice, but at the same time
with all the weakened force that comes
with old age. In spite of so much misery,
his face has remained calm, sympathetic,
and resigned. Does not he, the poor old
man, have, in his waistcoat pocket, his old
tobacco box of horn bound with copper,
out of which he offers, at will, a friendship
pinch to those who come and go and
whose paths cross on his domain, the
road?
The soup pot is nearby, with the spoon,
the basket, and the crust of black bread.
And that man is always there, lifting
his obedient hammer, always, from New
Year’s Day to St Sylvester’s; always he
is paving the road for mankind passing
by, so as to earn enough to stay alive. Yet
this man, who in no way is the product of
the artist’s imagination, this man of flesh
and bones who is really living in Ornans,
just as you see him there, this man, with
his years, with his hard labour, with his
misery, with his softened features of old
age, this man is not yet the last word in
human distress. just think what would
happen if he would take it into his head to
side with the Reds: He could be resented,
accused, exiled, and dismissed. Ask the
prefect.
From this scene, which, in spite of its
fascination, is merely imperturbably
sincere and faithful [to reality], from this
scene, in front of which one feels so far
removed from whimpering tendencies and
from all melodramatic tricks, let us turn to
Mr Courbet’s principal work of this year,
A Burial at Ornans...
Max Buchon: An Introduction to the Stonebreakers
and the Funeral at Ornans “Annonce” Le Peuple,
Journal de la Révolution Sociale 18 [ June 7, 1850 ]
Written as an advertisement for the exhibition of
the Stonebreakers in Dijon in July 1850. The text
is a revised version of an article that Buchon had
published earlier in Le Démocrate Franc-Comtois of
April 25, 1850 to publicize the exhibition of the same
work in Besançon.
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1.
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Would You Like Me To Give You A Description?
Gustave Courbet in a
letter to Francis Wey
(1812 - 1882)
November 26, 1849
in five translations.
As I had taken our carriage and was
driving on the way to the Chateau at
Saint-Denis to paint a landscape. Near
Maisieres, I stopped to consider two men
breaking stones on the highway.It’s rare
to meet the most complete expression of
poverty, so an idea for a picture came to
me on the spot.I made an appointment
with them at my studio for the next day,
and since then I’ve been working on the
picture. It’s of the same size as Evening at
Ornans.
Would you like me to give you a
description?
On the one side is an old man, seventy,
bent over his task, sledge-hammer in air,
he is tanned by the sun, his head shaded by
a straw hat. His trousers of poor material
are all patched up, in the cracked sabots
torn stockings, once blue, show his bare
heels. On the other side is a young fellow
with dusty head and swarthy skin, his
back and arms show through the holes in
his filthy tattered shirt, one leather brace
holds up the remenants of his trousers,
and his leather boots, caked with mud,
gape dismally in many places. The old man
is kneeling, the young one stands behind
him, holding a basket of broken rock.
Alas, in labour such as his, one’s life begins
that way it ends the same way.
Here and there is scattered their gear, a
basket, a stretcher, a hoe, a country boiler,
&c.
All this happens in the blazing sun, in the
open countryside, at the edge of a highway
ditch, the landscape fills the canvas.
Yes, M. Peisse, it’s necessary to encanailler
art.
For long the painters, my contemporaries,
have produced art from an idea and
cartoons.
I had taken our carriage to go to the castle of St.
Denis to paint a landscape. Near Maizieres I stopped
to contemplate two men who were breaking stones
on the road. It is not often that one encounters
the most complete image of poverty, and so, right
then and there, I got the idea for a painting. I told
them to come to my studio the next morning and
between then and now I have painted my picture.
It is the same size as Evening at Ornans. Shall I
describe it to you? [Lucky the man who has passed
his rhetoric course! Indeed, but though I went to
class, I still cannot spell.]
On one side is an old man of seventy, bent over his
work, his sledgehammer raised; his skin burned by
the sun, his face shaded by a straw hat. His pants,
of a coarse material, are patched everywhere, and
inside his cracked clogs his heels show through
socks that were once blue. On the other side
is a young man, with dusty hair and a swarthy
complexion. His filthy and tattered shirt reveals his
sides and arms. A leather suspender holds up what
is left of his trousers, and his muddy leather shoes
show gaping holes on every side. The old man is
kneeling, the young man is standing behind him
energetically carrying a basket of broken stones.
Alas, in that [social] class that is how one begins
and that is how one ends up!
Scattered here and there is their gear: a hod, a
hand barrow, a hoe, a farmer’s cooking pot, &c.
All of this takes place in bright sunshine, in the
middle of the countryside beside a ditch next to a
road. The landscape fills the canvas.
Yes, M. Peisse, we must drag art down from its
pedestal.
For too long you have been making art that
is pomaded and “in good taste.” For too long
painters, even my contemporaries, have based
their art on ideas and stereotypes.
2.
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3.
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I’d taken our carriage and was on my way to
the Chateau de Saint-Denis to do a landscape.
Near Maisieres I stopped to watch some men
breaking stones by the roadside. It’s rare
to stumble on such an expression of utter
poverty. And at once a picture came to me. I
arranged them to come to my studio the next
day and the picture is already done…
You can see an old man of seventy, bent over
his work, his sledgehammer raised, his skin
tanned by the sun, his head protected by a
straw hat. His coarse trousers are patched
everywhere and in his cracked clogs his heels
show through the holes in his blue socks. And
you see too a young man with brownish skin,
his hair full of dust and his filthy ragged shirt
leaving his arms and ribs exposed. A leather
strap holds up the remains of his trousers
and his muddy leather shoes are gaping
open everywhere. The old man is kneeling,
the young man is standing behind him,
energetically carrying a basket of stones.
Alas, when that’s your situation in life, that’s
how you begin and that’s how you finish.
All this is happening in the blazing sun in
open countryside, by a roadside ditch.
The landscape fills the canvas.
Yes, Mr Peisse, art needs roughing up.
For too long now you’ve been making nice art,
perfumed art.
For too long painters, my contemporaries,
have been making art from ideas and from
over-meticulous preliminary sketches.
I had taken our carriage and was going to the
Chateau of Saint Denis, near Maisieres to
paint a landscape. I stopped to look at two men
breaking stones on the road. It’s very unusual
to come across such a total expression of misery
and destitution. The idea of a picture came to
me at once. I asked them if they would come to
my studio on the next day, and since then I’ve
been working on my picture.
Would you like me to describe it to you?
On one side is an old man of seventy, bent over
his work, his hammer in the air, his skin tanned
by the sun, his head covered by a straw hat.
His trousers of coarse material are all patched,
inside his cracked wooden shoes are faded
blue socks through the holes of which his heels
show. On the other side is a young man with
a dusty head and a grey-brown complexion,
through his filthy tattered shirt you can see his
back and arms, one leather brace holds up the
remains of a pair of trousers and his leather
boots, mud covered, gape sadly in many places.
The old man is on his knees, the young man
behind him standing, carrying with vigour a
basket of broken stones.
Alas, in these jobs this is how you begin and
how you end… All around is scattered their
gear - a basket, a barrow, a pickaxe, &c.
Everything takes place in full sunlight, out in
the country, by the side of a ditch in the road…
4.
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5.
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There is an old man of seventy, bent over his work,
pick in the air, skin burnt by the sun, his head in the
shade of a straw hat; his trousers of rough cloth are
patched all over; he wears, inside cracked wooden
clogs, stockings which were once blue, with the
heels showing through. Here’s a young man with
his head covered in dust, his skin greyish-brown;
his disgusting shirt, all in rags, exposes his arms and
his flanks; leather braces hold up what is left of a
pair of trousers, and his muddy leather shoes are
gaping sadly in many places. The old man is on his
knees, the young man is behind him, standing up,
carrying a basket of stones with great energy.
Alas, in this occupation you begin like the one and
end like the other!
Their tools are scattered here and there: a backbasket, a hand barrow, a ditching tool, a cooking
pot, &c. All this is set in the bright sun, in the open
country, by a ditch at the side of the road; the
landscape fills the whole canvas.
Here is an old man of seventy, bending over his
work, with his hammer raised, his body burned by
the sun, his face shaded with a wide straw hat; his
coarse stuff breeches are all patched; and his heels
are showing through his stockings, which once were
white, in his broken old wooden shoes; near him
is a young man with his hair thick with dust and his
skin burned brown; his filthy ragged shirt shows his
sides and his arms; a leather belt supports what is
left of his trousers, and his muddy leather shoes
are full of gaping holes. The old man is kneeling;
the young man is standing behind him, holding a
basket of broken stones.
Alas! In such low life this is the beginning and the
end!
Rarely can one find so complete an expression of
poverty and wretchedness.
stretcher[brancard], a hoe [fossou], a rustic
pot in which they carry their midday
soup, and a piece of black bread in a
scrip. All this takes place in full sunlight,
by a ditch alongside a road. The figures
are seen against the green background
of a great mountain that fills the canvas
across which move the shadows of clouds.
Only in the right-hand corner, where the
mountain slopes, can one see a bit of blue
sky.
I made none of it up, dear friend. I saw
these people every day on my walk.
Besides, in that station one ends up the
same way as one begins.
Courbet in a letter to
Champfleury (Jules
Francois Felix FleuryHusson, 1820- 1889)
Feb-March 1850
I made none of it up, dear friend.
So much for the hunt, let’s talk about
paintings. I have already done more
painting since I left you than you could
shake a stick at. First, there is the painting
of the Stonebreakers, which is composed
of two very pitiable figures: one is an old
man, an old machine grown stiff with
service and age. His sunburned head is
covered with a straw hat blackened by dust
and rain. His arms, which look sprung,
are dressed in a coarse linen shirt. In
his red-striped waist-coat you can see a
tobacco box made of horn with copper
edges. At the knee, resting on a straw mat,
his drugget pants, which could stand by
themselves, show a large patch; through
his worn blue socks one sees his heels in a
cracked wooden clogs.
The one behind him is a young man
about fifteen years old, suffering from
scurvy. Some dirty linen tatters are his
shirt, exposing his arms and his sides. His
trousers are held up by a leather strap,
and on his feet he has his father’s old
shoes, which have long since developed
gaping holes on all sides. Here and there
the tools of their work are scattered on
the ground: a dosser [this needs some
explanation why a translator would fancy
using this description of une hotte..] , a
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Close Your Eyes Now... You Are Deceived; Look... Pierre-Joseph
Proudhon (1809- 1865)
Du Principe de l’art et
de sa destination sociale
(Paris : Garnier Freres,
1865)
The Stone Breakers is an irony addressed
to our industrial civilization, which daily
invents fantastic machines for plowing,
sowing, mowing, harvesting, threshing,
grinding, kneading, spinning, weaving,
cutting, printing, and manufacturing
nails, paper, pins, and cards; executing all
kinds of work, often very complicated and
delicate, and that is incapable of freeing
man from the work that is the most rough,
difficult, the most repugnant, an eternal
cause of misery…
The kneeling old man, bent over his rude
task, who breaks stones on the side of
the road with a long-handled hammer,
certainly deserves your sympathy. His
immobile body conveys a melancholy
that goes straight to the heart. His stiff
arms rise and fall with the regularity of
a lever. Here indeed is the mechanical
or mechanized man in the desolation
caused by our splendid civilization and
incomparable industry. Nevertheless,
this man has seen his best days, since he
is true to life; if the present is for him
without illusions, without hope, he owed
less to hold together his memories, his
regrets, and it is not a small matter to
have to remember something; while the
unfortunate boy who carries the stones
will never know the joys of life; chained
to a life of drudgery from an early age, he
has already torn himself up; his shoulder
bent, his heavy gait, his baggy trousers;
uncaring misery has made him lose
interest in himself and the quickness of
his eighteen years. Crushed in puberty,
he does not live. Thus modern servitude
devours generations in their formative
years: There’s the proletariat for you. And
we speak of freedom, of human dignity!
We cry out against the slavery of blacks,
whose treatment as beasts of burden at
least guarantees protection against this
excess of poverty. Pray to God that our
proletariat be granted a material existence
as good as blacks. Without a doubt, it
would not be completely fair to judge
this great nation of ten million sovereign
voters by this sad example; but does that
make it any less true that this is one of
the shameful aspects of our society, and
that there is not one of us, city dweller or
peasant, worker or proprietor, who may
not one day, by an accident of fortune, see
himself reduced to this? The condition
of the stone breakers is the same for more
than six million souls in France; and you
boast of your industry, your philanthropy,
and your politics!”
Courbet chose the naked main road, with
its emptiness and its monotony: and in
this he is right. The lonely road has a
very different poetry to that contrasted
in an affected opulence and misery. It is
inhabited by undistracted work, without
the celebration of poverty. Farmers, who
had the opportunity to see the Courbet’s
painting, wanted it placed, guess where?
On the altar of their church. The Stone
Breakers is worthy of a parable of the
Gospel; it is a moral in action.
37
Let Me Begin with Descriptions...
T.J Clark (1943- )
The Image of the People
38
Let me begin with descriptions. The Stonebreakers was
painted first, in November; it was taken from life, two
labourers from Maisières seen on the road and invited
back to Courbet’s studio. It is, as Courbet stressed to
Wey and Champfleury, a particular scene and also
an image of a general condition. ‘It is rare’, he told
Wey, ‘to encounter the most complete expression of
wretchedness, so all at once a picture came to me.’ The
same picture had come to many painters before him,
and the task itself - breaking stones to surface the tracks
and roads of the district - was almost as old as the rural
community. The year before, in the Salon of 1849,
Adolphe Leleux had painted a picture of ‘Aragonese
road-men sleeping beside the road they are repairing’.
It was not, in other words, a new subject, or a
modern one - and it did not need to be.
It is, like the paintings of the previous year, a simple
image. But the more we look at it, the more that
simplicity seems deceptive. There are two figures set
against the dark green of a hillside, and their physical
presence has been set down with the utmost care. Look
at the leather strap across the young boy’s back and
shoulder, and the puckered cloth of his shirt where the
strap is pulled tight by his effort: the way these details
register the substance of the body beneath them. Or
the same effect, produced as the old man’s waistcoat
rides up his back; or the thick, resistant folds of his
trousers at knee and thigh. This is painting whose
subject is the material weight of things, the pressure
of a bending back or the quarter-inch thickness of
coarse cloth. Not the back’s posture or the forms of
cloth in movement, but the back itself and the cloth
in its own right. Pressure, thickness, gravity: these are
the words which come to mind, and which describe the
Stonebreakers best. (The one satisfactory comparison -
though it only goes to show Courbet’s originality - is
with the painting of physical substance in Rembrandt’s
last pictures. I am thinking of the father’s hands on the
shoulders of the Prodigal Son, or the hands and sleeve
in the Bridal Couple.)
But the Stonebreakers is also a picture of action: not of
physical presence merely, but of physical labour (the
kind we call, with a cynical euphemism, ‘manual’). And
this is where the painting stops being simple. In his
letters Courbet talked of the boy ‘carrying his basket
of broken stones with energy’, of the old man ‘bent
overhis task, pick in air’. But the image he gave us is
rather different from what this implies. It is an image
of balked and frozen movement rather than simple
exertion: poses which are active and yet constricted;
effort which is somehow insubstantial in this world
of substances. What Courbet painted was assertion
turned away from the spectator, not moving towards
him: it is this simple contradiction which animates
the picture as a whole. Courbet swivelled the boy and
his basket of stones into the picture; he drew the old
man with averted gaze and a kind of hieratic (but also
senile) stiffness. The force of their actions is implied in
the pose, but also half concealed by it.
Where, to put it another way, will the momentum of the
stonebreakers’ actions carry them? Is the boy checked
in his stride, the pannier balanced for a moment on
his knee? Or is he striding vigorously back into the
picture space? The clothes the men wear - for all their
dense substance - actually prevent us from answering
these questions. In the Stonebreakers the drapery (the
very word seems out of place) articulates the figures’
presence but not their particular configuration in
space, andleast of all does it indicate their movement.
The man and the boy have no anatomy in the old
sense; no point where the arm ends and the shoulder
begins, no sharp and artificial distinctions between
waist, torso, and pelvis. The clothes they wear mask or
confuse these transitions: the holes torn in the boy’s
shirt reveal flesh but not muscle, the trousers disguise
his buttocks and hips, even the old man’s shoe seems a
form quite separate from the foot inside it. (Which is
true, of course, of clogs, or trousers made from cheap
wool, or the physiognomy of rags.) Clearly enough,
Courbet wanted to show an image of labour gone to
waste, and men turned stiff and wooden by routine. In
both his explanatory letters at the time he stated the
scene’s simple moral: ‘in this occupation, you begin
like the one and end like the other [dans cet état, c’est
ainsi qu’on commence, e’est ainsi qu’on finit].’
Compare Yeats’s two-line poem Parnell:
Fall of Icarus, watching nothing but the furrow turn;
or to the two stonebreakers on the road to Maisières.
At Maisières men are things, and the things ugly and
monotonous. The Stonebreakers was (and is, in its prewar photograph) a grim picture, a picture that called
for an antithèse psychologique, a counterweight, as
Buchon put it in 1850.
Parnell came down the road, he said to a cheering man:
Ireland shall get her freedom and you still break stone!
But the achievement here is that Courbet gets the moral
down in paint, and does not lean on anecdote or pathos:
he dissipates the weight his brushstrokes register, he
turns the painting against itself. He concentrates on
the task in hand: the action of labour, not the feelings
of the individuals who perform it. And that is a rare
achievement. There are pictures in plenty of worship,
anguish, celebration, states of mind; but, for many
reasons, there are few images of work. It is too obvious
and too obdurate for form: painters avoid it. And when
they paint it, they choose the dramatic action or the
interlude, the sower’s outflung arm, harvesters resting,
Arachne at her loom. If we look for work alone, in its
own right, in detail, we have to go to Courbet or to
Bruegel: to the ploughman on the cliff in Bruegel’s
39
In these conditions, the listless and sick ground spreads
feverish miasmas;
Francis Wey (1812 1882)
Biez de Serine: Roman
rustique. Feuilleton du
National
1850
40
At midday especially, during these days of
torpor between harvest time and grape harvest,
nature appears dead. Crushed by the repeated
strokes of the sun, it succumbs to the pain, it
ceases to move, to breathe, it turns off its noises
and its songs; and the earth inflamed from the
day hangs over a world plunged into the silence
of night.
In these conditions, the listless and sick ground
spreads feverish miasmas; the birds are silent,
the breathless herds avoid the pastures; finally,
man, bending his shoulders under the weight
of the day, lowers to the bronze ground his eyes
which are being devoured by floods of light, and
in the unstocked fields he sadly wipes his brow
bathed in sweat.
Then, country-dwellers seek the shadows and
ask for a little sleep in the absent breeze. Among
the poor hardworking people it is only the most
unfortunate, the most needy, those that use
their arms, the poorest, that work during the
hours of the most ruthless heat.
This was the fate of two road menders who
broke stones at noon, on a main road lined
with those ribbons of grey rocks, which are so
frequent in the foothills of the Jura plateau.
One, bent by the burden of his age, was a very
thin old man, crouched on a pile of stones,
lifting his sledgehammer with two hands and
bringing it down in turn on the pieces that he
breaks up: he accompanied each blow with a
dry and short groan. His flesh was suntanned
and sweaty; his physiognomy gloomy; the ruins
of a stitched straw hat protected his brow; his
trousers of rough fabric were all patched; his
socks, which had been blue, exposed his heels,
badly kept by his cracked clogs.
The other young man, with blue eyes, a flushed
face with dust in his hair. His disgusting
tattered shirt showed his chest, his complexion,
his sides, his bony arms and black. A leather
strap was holding the remains of his trousers,
and shoes the color of mud laughed sadly many
ways. Standing behind his companion, the
young man has vigorously against his belly, a
basket of broken stones:. .
More stupid, the old, tireless and regular like
a machine, works on his knees, alas! in this
business there “s and the” we begin, c “and
that” it ends. . “.
“God! long before we seek to meet a more
striking poverty, more sad emblem of the
“misfortune.”
“Therefore, my boy, you can neither sleep at
noon, nor stand for more than five minutes, or
eat your fill.
While if the company does not pass through
the prefecture, which seeks, above all, a rich
to cover the liability of directors, we would bid
directly to better account for the operator, the
state would an economy;
you would earn five francs instead of winning
one and a quarter, and I would earn three
francs instead of earning fifteen cents. “