Next to it, a twofer, the lolling giantesses of “Sleep,” from 1866. It offers a vision of precise forms and Rococo pinks and whites, although what is often referred to as a lesbian embrace seems more like an orbit at very close quarters, slightly above the bed.
The second gallery contains an astounding work of accidental Modernism: the unfinished “Preparation of the Bride/Dead Girl,” one of the big paintings of village life that Courbet tackled in the early 1850s. Here a roomful of women orbits around a young, limp girl being dressed by three of them. Other women make a bed, lay a tablecloth or straighten up.
This look reaches a zenith of some kind in his drowsy masterpiece “Young Ladies on the Banks of the Seine” of 1856-57. Here the two subjects lie side by side forming a mass of frothy garments, female flesh, assorted flowers and moral lassitude. The overt, possibly lesbian eroticism that shocked viewers remains palpable. So does the ebullient, taunting hash of traditions, of public park with boudoir, of still life and figure painting, all crowded by a strangely vertical plane of water.
"The Desperate Man" (1844-45)
No artist before Picasso put so much of himself on canvas. In one self-portrait, he is long-haired and delicate, a Pontormo prince. In another he tears his hair, wide-eyed and wild, like Johnny Depp’s pirate rendered by Caravaggio. And in “Self-Portrait with Pipe” we see an early version of the disengaged gaze, at once dreaming and sardonic, that would become a trademark.
"Self-Portrait with Pipe" (circa 1849)
Overbearing and arrogant, Courbet virtually wrote the definition of the modern artist as a bohemian, narcissistic loner and political radical. He shunned the academy and lived by the phrase “epater le bourgeois.” He emerged in Paris in the 1840s, when the modern art market was beginning to take shape, as were the popular press and popular culture. Courbet was quick to grasp the usefulness of all three forces.
épater <1> vt inf (stupéfier) to amaze; ça t'épate, hein? amazing, isn't it?
"The Shaded Stream at the Puits-Noir" (circa 1860-65)
Courbet only grudgingly accepted the title of Realist. Even in front of his most realistic work, you often find yourself wrestling not so much with reality as it was lived as with the sheer uncanniness of his painting. It is a continually shape-shifting uncanniness that mixes genres and styles, and genders, with subtle visual irony.
Courbet only grudgingly accepted the title of Realist. Even in front of his most realistic work, you often find yourself wrestling not so much with reality as it was lived as with the sheer uncanniness of his painting. It is a continually shape-shifting uncanniness that mixes genres and styles, and genders, with subtle visual irony.
Photo: Baltimore Museum of Art: The Cone Collection
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