The Stone breakers by Gustave Courbet and The Gleaners by Jean Francois Millet
The images The Stone breakers by Gustave Courbet, and 1849 and The Gleaners, 1857 by Jean Francois Millet, are important artworks in Realism. The two images are about the daily life, a subject that everyone tends to forget. They express the routine and the insignificant; for instance the political and social life of the poor farmers. This paper therefore seeks to formally analyze and investigate the relation between images The Stone breakers by Gustave Courbet, 1849 and The Gleaners, 1857 by Jean Francois Millet on their sociopolitical and cultural contexts.
The Stone Breakers by Gustave Courbet
Unlike Jean Francois Millet, who was prominent for drawing extra idealized enthusiastic and hale rustic employees, Gustave Courbet depicted road constructors putting on toned and frayed clothes in his art work, The Stone Breakers. It is not a laudable picture but it's rather a representation of an exact description of denial that was more regular in the 19th century in the rural life of the French.[1]
Gustave required to illustrate exactly what was happening at that time, not like the renowned drawings which normally idealize the superior as well as the middle classes. In his masterpiece painting, he highlighted a picture he saw of some guys breaking big stones alongside the path. He said, "it is not often that one encounters so complete an expression of poverty and so, right then and there I got the idea for painting."
The anonymous stone breakers in Gustave's image is set beside a small hill common in countryside Ornan, a French town someplace where the artist had been brought up. He applied the disparity into stone breakers age to show the sequence of paucity then he sheds light on their predicament by inserting them in sturdy brightness crosswise the forefront of the picture, with the silhouette of the hill at the back and merely a miniature of blue in the higher right.1
The artist has keenly supplemented particulars to the image so that we are familiar with their lives; like the ill fitting and torn clothes. We see in the image a pot, a piece of bread and a spoon on the left laying on a rug which shows us there is petite reprieve from their daily labor. At the right, there is a basket for carrying debris and a scythe laying down so that we can imagine that apart from crushing the stones, they are also preparing the land. With the uncovered fore arm and muscles appearing firm, we get the impression that the basket of rocks held by the man was so weighty and the hat the other man was wearing symbolized they were working in the heat. The two are however huge in size and are revealed with poise befitting their readiness to do the unnoticed work which modern life is built upon. Courbet has employed a very partial palette by using small amounts of the grey and blue and orange which brings relief from the muted colors of the earth.[2]
Works like these by Courbet incited indictment of political relations but his actual link with politics was complex. He used to refer to himself as a republican by birth. A day before the Paris commune of 1871, Gustave took part in active politics but was short-lived as the government was socialistic. Regrettably, The Stonebreakers was ruined during World War II plus other pictures when the vehicle carrying the pictures was bombed at Koningstein near Dresden.
The Gleaners by Jean Francois Millet
On the other hand, inspired by Naturalism which was later called Realism; Jean Francois Millet came up with The Gleaners and is known today as the original work of modern art. It is a fine instance of Millet's deep admiration for the human labor pride. Gleaning is the act of collecting leftovers from the farm after the harvest. The picture shows three women each gleaning by searching for the corns ears, picking them up and trying to put them in a sheaf. The job was tiresome but it contributed to the diets of the countryside workforce and it was one of the main activities by the French peasant farmers.
The image's focal point is on the lowest ranks of rural society encouraged enough resistance from the superior classes who were offended by its artisticness and social extremism and associated it with the intensifying socialist association. Nevertheless, it was time-honored for display at the Academy. Moreover, it was much cherished by the French republicans as its noble and cherished the rural people. Millet ensured close special treatment to his masterpiece by using all mechanism to infuse his subjects with plain but epic magnificence. The sloping sun light portrays the sculptural excellence of the gleaners as their set words and broad features tend to stress the heavy character of their job. Moreover, the images bowed twice and working in the dark forefront is set alongside a humid rural setting scene of harvesters. The difference between profusion and paucity, and amid light and darkness, is the ingenious used by the artist to highlight the class segregate in the society. The aloofness of the landowner is also painted by the dim picture of the landlord custodian, sitting on a horse in the secluded distance.
The whole Millets picture is a clarification about the societal divides of the France, particularly, on the incapability of the poor to raise beyond their comfort zones. The ladies are portrayed bending so as not to puncture the horizon, affirming that where we are born into is where we dwell. The highest line of the land is taken by small scale farmers watched over by the caretaker, none of whom break the horizon either. The sky signifies the impossible upper class of the the general public that looks down on its subjects. It is unusual from other people as air is to earth.2
There is a signal of transformation coming as the pasty vest and the red and blue hats of the gleaners from the three colors' of the Tricolor which is the flag of the French Republic and the mark of traditional rebellion in France. The Gleaners may be taken as an illustration of women pleasing their own survival desires, but we know they are supervised by the constable in the detachment and they perhaps cannot endure on the gleanings they find. They serve as somewhat of a female ornament to Courbet's The Stone Breakers (1849-50).
Equally, the paintings were unpleasant to the bourgeois spectators because they reminded them of the reality of the underclass. Courbet portrait was consequently the most inconsolable painting than Millet's.
Bibliography
"Realism – Gustave Courbet, The Stonebreakers, 1849". 2018. Kiama Art Gallery. https://kiamaartgallery.wordpress.com/2015/04/23/realism-gustave-courbet-the-stonebreakers-1849/.
"The Gleaners, Jean-Francois Millet: Analysis". 2018. Visual-Arts-Cork.Com. http://www.visual-arts-cork.com/paintings-analysis/gleaners-millet.htm.
[1] Gustave Courbet, Realism, The Stonebreakers, 1849". Kiama Art Gallery. 2018y.the-stonebreakers-1849/.
[2] Jean-Francois Millet: The Gleaners. 2018. Visual-Arts-Cork.Com 2018.
