Realism

I have never seen an angel, so I do not paint one, Courbet is said to have put it that way, though no solid record confirms he actually said it. Painting working people and everyday scenes instead of myths and heroes: a turn that pulled painting's subject back to the here and now. What's interesting is how he pushed it through. When his work was rejected from the 1855 Paris World's Fair, Courbet built his own pavilion beside the exhibition grounds, at his own expense, and called it the Pavilion of Realism, a solo show of his own making. Rejected? Then build your own venue. That attitude would lead, eight years later, to the Salon des Refusés, and nineteen years later, to the Impressionist exhibition. Five years before that he had picked a quieter fight: A Burial at Ornans (1849–50). What it shows is an ordinary funeral in his home village. No heroes, no myth. But the canvas is 315 by 660 centimetres — the size of a history painting. Just as Géricault had painted a news event at those dimensions thirty years earlier, Courbet painted a country funeral procession at them. At the Salon of 1850–51 it caused an uproar. In a world where rank was decided by subject, size itself was an argument: deciding who gets painted large is deciding who matters.