Courbet’s Masterpiece: The Burial at Ornans
Predominance of Horizontal Lines
The predominance of horizontal lines, broken only by the cross. The contours are well-defined and very limited lineaments. The chromatic colors are limited to brown (the earth) and black (mourning), broken only by the white area of the church, the village women, and a dog. His treatment of daylight is particular to the hours of dawn when shadows are still not very marked. The loose brushwork and linearity prevail over the pictorial.
Composition
The composition focuses on the grave of the deceased, along with a group of men surrounding it, notably the character who is kneeling. The composition is closed. The characters take up three-quarters of the composition. The gaze is directed towards the left of the box where the characters are more advanced, creating a circle around the hole. Also, the landscape is broken at this point because it is where the cross is. Time is imaginary and static, as it is. It is believed that space and the characters are real, but not the situation. The characters were positioned to be painted; it was not really a funeral. The place is real, since it is the author’s village.
The Style
This painting belongs to the Realist style. This movement began in the second half of the nineteenth century. The authors paint the ‘heroes’ realistically, which is why they paint at home, in studios, and never leave the street. The factors that influence the emergence of this movement are: the creation of the bourgeoisie, positivism, problems, and industrialization of the worker’s movement.
Features of Realistic Painting
- Rupture of the traditional hierarchy.
- Value of particularity: popular types of workers.
- Landscape Painter (paint exterior).
- Painter of figures (painted people and objects): Courbet, Millet, Fortuny, Daumier. These break down the topic.
Courbet was born in 1819 in Ornans. His village was the scene of many works; this comment is a clear example. Despite being educated in rural areas, he was able to travel to Paris. There he was impressed with Baroque painters such as Velázquez, Zurbarán, Rembrandt, Hals, and Ribera. In 1847 he moved to Holland. He wanted his work to have political and social connotations; he wanted to end the bourgeoisie. For him, the role of painting was to reproduce reality as it was; the painter has no moral, political, or religious damages.
Significance and Content
The theme represented in this work is the funeral of a neighbor in the village of Ornans, where Courbet is from. Possibly his grandfather, whom he greatly admired. Nobody paid much attention to the ceremony. The most sentimental figures are on the right side (the weepers). We also see in the center, where two people were found with respect to the scene and have been stopped. This work was highly criticized by the bourgeoisie and the people of Paris for the ugliness of the characters, and because a situation such as death was painted as ugly.
Function
It is the work of radical realism where Courbet expresses his ideology because he wants to be a ‘testimony to the fact’ that distorts much of the painters. The author wishes to express nature with absolute accuracy and objectivity. Critics have pointed to this work as showing the importance of community. When we look at the work, it arouses pity for us, but on the other hand, it is not an exaggeration; death is natural. “Final phrase”: During his time, Courbet did not want to paint the heroes of the past, but everyday heroes, characters of daily life, with activities of daily living. The funeral of Ornans is a hymn to the life of the people; it is pure realism.