CInquesting characters-fifty-one with the dog-, extraordinary dimensions-three meters out of six-, a scene from ordinary life, especially, represented with the pump that we had hitherto reserved for biblical or mythological scenes: A burial in Ornans From Gustave Courbet, who made a scandal at the Paris Salon of 1850-1851, is a capital painting of art history.
Alas, many times inappropriate – including in the lifetime of the painter -, having never been the subject of a real restoration, the work exhibited in Orsay since 1986 is seriously damaged, darkened, monochrome … The painting is only the shadow of the one who was painted in 1849. The direction of the Musée d’Orsay, supported by the Center for Research and Restoration of the Museums of France (C2MRF) An Italian elite team this titanic restoration.
“Innumerable sketches”
And the result promises to be spectacular. The work has only just started that a chromatic detail already suggests the extent of the expected metamorphosis. One of the characters wears a pair of stockings that we thought was green.
And we discover, now that a part of the yellowing varnish has been cleaned, that they are actually bright blue, radiant … “Gustave Courbet was extremely attentive to the clothes of his contemporaries, it is therefore not at all anecdotal”, specifies Isode Pludermarcher, general conservative of the painting department of the Orsay museum.
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