Kevin Anderson Post 2

The realism in Gustave Courbet’s paintings were offensive to the bourgeoisie due to the paintings glorifying the plight of the poorer man.  In respect to “The Stonebreakers”, Courbet epicted an old man with the lowest of clothing (torn vest) and clogs, working to break large rocks into smaller ones for a road with a relatively small hammer that looks like it might take all day to finish very little.  The book mentions that the man is knelt and in agony of some sort.  Not quite in my opinion.  I see the man’s knee on a bushel of grass and he has found a way to be as comfortable as possible while still having to maintain work in such a laborious manner.  It can be assumed that only poor peasants would do this work, and perhaps that is the case, but this one detail doesn’t launch out at me as a primary commentary on the plight of the poor. 

Along with the old man is a younger teen struggling to move a basket of broken rocks up to what I interpret as the road.  He appears to perhaps be the son of the old man, and looking at details, he has on more modern shoes, but the pants are torn and the shirt is ripped considerably.   This tells me that the man has given his young man better shoes to perhaps better his life in some way, but he is still expected to do the heavier of jobs with the toting of the broken rock up to the road.  Courbet’s comment that “in labor such as this, one’s life begins that way, and it ends the same” resonates as the characters in the painting have such a vast perceivable age gap.  Without him saying that, I would not have made that connection, most likely based on the hope and opportunity that the US offers us as young people.  I simply see a younger man helping his relative of some nature and his dress seems that of what is to come or could be.  Now I also see that there is grain growing in what looks perhaps as abundance.  I could see a connection between the grain and that the grain resides on the left side of the painting with the boy.  This might be that the young man has the opportunity to pick the rich vibrant grain and work the fields to provide for his family. 

            Now when I look at the actual size of the painting and that it is quite large at 5x8’+ , this is probably what upset the Bourgeoisie most.  As with what the book said, that large canvases were reserved for paintings of glory and the size is what makes it a political statement.  I believe if he had painted this small, than the reaction would not have been as adverse as it was.  To depict such common people in a glorious fashion did not sit well with the bourgeoisie.  I don’t necessarily agree that this size was done to purposely upset the bourgeoisie.  For this painting, I’m just not sure whether that was the only size he could or wanted to paint.  Perhaps this scale allowed him to acquire the detail he sought.  Being an experienced painter myself, sometimes you draw to your tools to see what is possible, not the other way around. 

            Considering that the reaction of the bourgeoisie was most certainly negative from this first work, I can see him purposely painting “A Burial at Orans” to really upset someone or the entire system as a whole.  Without the complete history of Gustave Courbet paintings, this is what I read through the lines.