I, GUSTAVE COURBET. PAINTER AND REBEL (PART 2)

Courbet’s early hunting scenes combine precise observation with the knowledge of animals that he had gathered on excursions through the forests of his native region. Courbet was interested in hunting not only as a new element of bourgeois country life. The figure of the hunter also represented his own understanding of a human being closely connected to nature. In this group of works, Courbet shows the different phases of the hunt.

The fleeing stag appears dramatically animated, the slain animal like a trophy, while hunters and dogs rest in the dark, idyllic forest.

Courbet first experienced the expanse of the ocean and the force of the waves in Normandy in 1841. Later, too, he repeatedly painted on the Norman coast, for example in Étretat, Trouville, and Honfleur. His encounter with the sea opened up a field of motifs that occupied him for many years.

On the coasts of Normandy and the Mediterranean, he created paintings that capture the most varied manifestations of water and weather – from turbulent waves to calm horizons. Human figures rarely come to the fore; the focus is on the dynamics of nature.

With the palette knife and a multilayered application of paint, Courbet gave his seascapes a pronounced physicality. The strong response to these works led him to return to individual motifs several times and vary them.

Courbet also painted the Porte d’Aval several times, a picturesque stone arch already visited by tourists in his day. The motif was later taken up repeatedly by the Impressionist Claude Monet.

Gustave Courbet’s depictions of the nude are among the most striking works in his oeuvre. Instead of idealized figures, he shows the human, mostly female body realistically and without embellishment. With The Origin of the World, he radicalizes this approach: the sharply reduced crop focuses exclusively on the female lower abdomen and dispenses with any narrative framing.

The painting, created in 1866 for the Ottoman diplomat and art collector Khalil Bey, remained hidden for a long time and only became known to a broader public in the twentieth century. Artistic responses to this taboo-breaking work are numerous: from Marcel Duchamp’s late work Étant donnés to Balthasar Burkhard’s photographic paraphrase and the French artist Orlan, who, in a composition modeled on Courbet, shows a phallus instead of the vulva:

In her work, with a critical view of the male world, The Origin of the World becomes L’Origine de la guerre, that is, The Origin of War.

Like Gustave Courbet, James McNeill Whistler was fascinated by Joanna Hiffernan and painted the “beautiful Irishwoman” several times, including in this 1862 painting entitled Symphony in White, No. 1: The White Girl. Until 1864, she was not only Whistler’s preferred model, but also his partner.

Courbet’s depictions of grottos and springs are among his most distinctive landscapes. Inspired by the Jura region, his homeland, he directed his painterly gaze toward rocky ravines, caves, and watercourses. Instead of idyllic nature, he shows primal, powerful settings.

With a sculptural application of paint using palette-knife technique, he makes geological structures and flowing water immediately tangible. These motifs are often interpreted as symbols of origin, mystery, and hidden inner worlds.

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