The De-Politicization of Gustave Courbet: Transformation and Rehabilitation under the Third Republic

Abstract

Two quite different pursuits lead to place from which to contemplate late nineteenth-century of Gustave Courbet. The first is my ongoing investigation of Courbet within framework of those issues of realism that were his concern. The second is a meditation on questions feminism poses for art history and theory: pair, of which one part is have there been no great women artists? and other, its corollary, have there been great male ones? Why has this entity, great artist, existed at all, in short? And more specifically, what configuration will notion of great have at given moments in history? How is this entity the great artist constructed? And to what purposes? What political needs, what psychological yearnings, what ideological functions, does such a notion serve? And more concretely, how was a former Communard, an exile, a stillcontroversial and prickly painter like Courbet transformed, during decade between 1879 and 1889, into something approaching a cultural hero of Third French Republic? The steps in Courbet's actual rehabilitation are easy enough to follow and have been succinctly outlined in current literature.1 In 1877, a year before his death, Courbet was still in official disfavor, in exile in Switzerland, as a result of his participation in Commune, and more to point, his supposed responsibility for destruction of Vend6me Column. As late as November 26, 1877, a little more than a month before artist's death, courtordered sale of his works for payment of reconstruction of column brought in, altogether, derisory sum of 10,000 francs. Courbet died on New Year's Eve of 1877, on uneasy brink of Republic of Opportunists, a year before MacMahon was replaced by Jules Grevy, a veteran of 1848, a year before republic was actually controlled by republicans. In 1878 Courbet made a minor showing at Exposition Universelle