Courbet - Young Ladies of the Village (1851)

The Invasion of the Countryside

Gustave Courbet didn’t paint his sisters to be charming. In 1851, the French elite were terrified of the provinces. They saw the rural peasantry as a revolutionary threat with the power of the vote. When Courbet brought Young Ladies of the Village to the Paris Salon, he wasn't offering a pastoral fantasy. He was bringing the dirt of Ornans into the velvet rooms of the aristocracy.

The three women are Courbet’s sisters: Zélie, Juliette, and Zoé. They are dressed in the stiff, awkward finery of a rising middle class trying to buy respectability. To the critics in Paris, this was an insult. They were used to seeing village girls as "noble savages" or dainty shepherdesses. Courbet painted them on a massive scale usually reserved for queens and goddesses.

The technical choices were just as offensive as the subjects. Critics mocked the "clumsy" perspective and the tiny cows in the background. They claimed Courbet didn’t understand depth. In reality, he was stripping away the fake, fluffy layers of Academic art. He wanted the viewer to smell the crushed limestone and dry mountain grass. Even though the painting caused an outcry, it was bought by the Count de Morny. The "Kingmakers" could hate the art, but they couldn't ignore the fact that the world was changing. The rural world was no longer a fairy tale. It was a political force.

References

• Clark, T.J. Image of the People: Gustave Courbet and the 1848 Revolution. University of California Press, 1973.
• Faunce, Sarah, and Linda Nochlin. Courbet Reconsidered. Brooklyn Museum, 1988.
• The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Young Ladies of the Village (Les Demoiselles du village). Accession Number 40.175.
• Rubin, James H. Courbet. Phaidon Press, 1997.