Three (good) reasons to go see the “Becoming Courbet” exhibition at the Ornans museum

Rare are the exhibitions that focus on the youth of artists who have become famous, and yet the first works can reveal the painter in the making. This is the case for Gustave Courbet with an exceptional exhibition at the Ornans museum. A first!

The Louvre, Orsay, the Petit Palais, Carnavalet… If prestigious Parisian museums have agreed to lend their works to the Ornans museum, it is because the intentions of this new exhibition at the Courbet d'Ornans museum are particularly interesting. . Here are three reasons to go discover it before April 20, 2025.

Return to basics to restore reality

Gustave Courbet likes to blur his lines. For Art historians, it is quite complex to know precisely the journey of Ornans' child. On the occasion of this exhibition, the Courbet Institute revisits certain preconceived ideas. Here is an interesting discovery.

Until now, specialists on the painter thought that he left Ornans at the age of 20 to study law; Courbet himself had written this in one of his numerous letters. An archive, exhibited for the first time in a museum, reveals another intention. We owe this discovery to Jean-Luc Gannard. This member of the Courbet Institute went through entire bundles of passport stubs, kept at the Ornans media library.

And there, almost by chance, the enthusiast comes across a nugget! One of Gustave Courbet's first passports, it dates from 1839, the year he left for Paris. At that time, to leave his department, he needed a passport. He must have this document signed by his father, because he is still a minor.

This discovery is important in more than one way. On this administrative document, we can read the profession that Courbet indicates: “painter” and not a law student. A detail that says a lot about the young man's will.

Just above this passport, the visitor can see for the first time a small painting which comes from a private collection. The painter represented the Loue valley. “It is a magnificent study of the sky. (…) explains Benjamin Foudral, director and curator of the museum and Pôle Courbet, Courbet reveals here his great sensitivity to natural elements. It already goes beyond the fairly conventional forms adopted by Father Beau (his teacher) in his View of Ornans, painted around 1835.” The work was painted before his departure to Paris.

Insight into the creative process

The visitor will only have to walk a few meters to experience a striking connection. Barely leaving the first room evoking the painter's youth in Ornans, the visitor becomes aware of the work accomplished by the artist between 1839 and 1844. Courbet wrote to his parents in February 1844. “If you think I'm having fun, you're very wrong. For over a month I really haven't had a quarter of an hour to myself.” Only three years separate the small landscapes of Doubs and the sublime nude study on loan from the Museum of Fine Arts in Reims.

Throughout the visit, we become aware of the painter's gropings and research. It's fabulous to see how a young artist searches for himself even if, with Courbet, nothing is obvious. One of his first biographers, Georges Riat describes the artist's early works as “varied and contradictory, thus reflecting the conflict of ideas, which swirled in his mind in various directions, and during which his particular aesthetic was gradually developed, unconsciously.

To get back as close as possible to reality, there's nothing like X-rays. An entire room of the exhibition is dedicated to the painter's self-portraits made between 1840 and 1845. Side by side, the paintings and their x-rays. Thanks to the research of specialists from C2RMF, the Center for Research and Restoration of Museums of France, we can observe how Courbet rectified some of these paintings.

With an untold story. If you're not careful, you could walk past a small painting in the exhibition without really paying attention. This oil on canvas dates from 1842, it is entitled Le Rétameur. Usually, it is presented in the permanent collection of the museum.

Bruno Mottin, scientific curator of the exhibition and honorary curator of heritage at C2RMF, took the time to sit in front, to “enter the painting as if putting yourself in the place of the artist”. There, he discovers that Courbet has erased a woman! Before retouching, Gustave Courbet was inspired by “scmoralizing enes of the 18th century” to represent a mother who encourages her children to get to know people poorer than them. Finally, the painter will erase the mother. “Ichose to eliminate him, explain Bruno Mottin, to affirm a tendency more oriented towards realism, with less moralizing force and a representation closer to reality, to existence. This is the future realistic painter whose beginnings we see here.”.

A pivotal place in art history

It is indeed impressive to see how Courbet searches for himself and ends up finding himself before becoming the master of realism, a crucial stage in the history of art between romanticism and impressionism. The visitor easily understands the ambition that drives Courbet. In a letter addressed to his parents in April 1845, he assured “I want to do great painting.(…) What is certain is that before five years I must have a name in Paris. There is no middle ground, because I work for that. It's hard to get there, I know, and there are few because out of thousands, there is only one, sometimes, who breaks through.”.

This exhibition tells how a farmer's son “managed to rise to the top of the art world in the mid-19th century, positioning himself as a leader of new realistic painting and giving impetus to modern art.”

It is this place of Courbet in the history of art which gives all the strength of this exhibition. Benjamin Foudral, director and curator of the museum and Pôle Courbet, recalls that “Courbet is part of a new generation of artists who are born at a time when museums are also being born, where these establishments are open to everyone.”

As soon as he arrived in Paris, young Gustave came to copy the great masters of painting at the Louvre. Titian, Correggios, Rembrandt, Rubens, “a school of vision” specifies Dominique de Font-Réaulx, general curator at the Louvre. Among these masters, Guido Reni. His “Christ with a Reed” was on loan from the Louvre.

And, for the first time, we can see Courbet's copy next to the Ecce Homo painted around 1636.He's a devourer of images” says Dominique de Font-Réaulx“Courbet has the museum as his horizon. A horizon for which he knows that he is working for this posterity. (…) He knows well, he already has the intuition as a very proud young painter and very sure of his talent, that he will find a place one day or another in these collections that he admires. The full brilliance of this talent is on display at the Courbet d'Ornans museum.