MONTAGE

TheFruitsofHardLabor: GustaveCourbetsPostCommune StillLifes

CatherineWalworth
GustaveCourbet assaultedtheFrenchArtAcademysmonop olyontraditioninthe1850sand60s.Hewaslargerthanlife, both in statureandin selfpromotion. He became thefaceof Realism, a new liberal art movement that preferred rustic scenes of real peasants and workers to idealized Greek gods and goddesses. Courbets subject matter, political posturing, andincreasinguseofthepalettekniferatherthanbrush,made it clearthathiscanvasesweredonebyaruan.To thisdayit is believed that this same artist painted a series of safe, if sometimes odd,stilllifesafterthecollapseoftheParisCom mune in 1871, a workers revolution that inspired Vladimir Lenins dreams of a Russian revolution decades later. James Rubinwroteasrecentlyas1997,...thereisnothingcurrently known in Courbets art that bears direct witness to the mo mentousevents.Thereisonlyanuneasyselfportrait drawing inwhichhehasshavedohisbeardinanattempttoeludethe police.1IndithardtobelievethatCourbetsuddenlybecame a docilepainterofapples and pears. Thiswouldbea serious step down in a very gutsy career after the most important eventsofhislife.Instead,goingoversomehistorymightreveal somethingbelowthesurfacethatcommemoratestheprevious winterswarandrevolution. AnoverlycondentFrance hadbeentoo easily tricked into declaring waron Prussiaon July 19,1870. Itstroopswere illequipped and illtrained. By September, Otto von Bis marck's troops captured the French emperor Napoleon III at thebattleofSedan.Withouttheirhead ofstate,theFrench dethronedhimanddeclaredtheThirdRepublic,aformofciti
Note: Montage articles, and the images contained therein, are for educational use only. 1. James H. Rubin, Courbet (London: Phaidon Press, 1997), 282, 283.

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CATHERINE WALWORTH zen government, on September4 and continuedthe Franco PrussianWar. Defying their bohemian stereotypes, Parisian artists mobilized in September 1870 and formed a commission. As president, Courbet was in charge of safeguarding museum treasures. Andr Gill, a caricaturist, worked on his team to safely store the Muse du Luxembourgs collections, just as Courbet did at the Louvre. Several artists, including the painter Edouard Manet and printmaker Flix Braquemond, enlistedintheNationalGuard.Foratime,thecityofParisral liedtogetheragainstthePrussianenemy. ThePrussians wereat the citys gatesall that winter, patiently starving Paris into submission. Bismarck reportedly said that eight days without caf au lait ought to break them.2 ForParis, having set aside only two months worth of supplies and failing to ration even these, the fourmonths of siegegraduallyturnedthecityonitself.Foodsupplieswereso short for the lowest classes that beef turned to horse meat, whichthen turnedtorat asthemainsourceofprotein.Even tually household pets disappeared. The beloved elephants at thezoowereshotandeaten,andwealthiercitizenslikeVictor Hugo dined on the zebra, reindeer, yak and kangaroo, all from the JardindesPlantes.3 To makematters worse, it was oneofthecoldestwintersinmemoryandeverystick ofwood wasvulnerable.EventhetreesalongtheChampslyseswere choppeddownandburnedforheat. Having barelysurvivedthewinter,Parisnallysurren dered.ThePrussiansparadedthroughthecityonMarch1,1871 and their departure two days latercreated a power vacuum. Localdistrictleaderswho hadjustfoughtthePrussiansforthe French Republic, ledbyAdolphe Thiers from Versailles,were now ungratefully told to disarm. Civil war ignited and just weeks laterthe newlycreated Commune took power, a brief proletariangovernmentsofarLeftthatitpolarizedevenliber als.Courbet,whohadlongposturedasaProudhoniansocialist and man of the people, was elected to the Commune on April20.Fortwo months,theCommunardsenactedsweeping proletarian reforms, closed churches, ended night work for bakers,extendedrightstowomen,andputartistsincontrolof theirowneducationandexhibitions.
2. Quoted in Ross King, The Judgment of Paris (New York: Walker & Company, 2006), 284. 3. Ibid., 289.

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THE FRUITS OF HARD LABOR OnMay21,Versailles armiesfoughttheCommunards, who inturnset reto monumentsandtoreupBaronHauss mannsnewboulevards, stacking pavingstones into over 500 barricades throughout the city. General MacMahons troops defeatedtheCommunardsduringtheweek nowknownas La SemaineSanglante(BloodyWeek).AtPreLachaisecemetery, 147Communardswereshot and buried. Overthenext weeks, thousands more would be put up against the cemetery wall andexecutedbeforebeingthrownintoamassgrave.Asmany as30,000Communardswereexecuted,38,000imprisoned,and another7,000 deported,oftento theharshtropicalconditions ofNewCaledonia. Courbet had a specialprice onhis headduringthe re prisals.Although hehad been in charge ofrescuing and pre servingarttreasuresduringtheghting,hewasblamedforthe fact that Communards knocked down the Vendme column. ThoughhedespisedtheImperialist militarism it stoodfor, in fact, he had only ocially called for its removal during the FrancoPrussian War, perhapsto amilitarymuseum, and not the destruction which later occurred.4 On May 23, Courbet wentinto hiding. It wastwo weeksbeforehewaslocatedand arrested, apparently emerging from a closet in a musical in strument shop.5 During this time he sketched the beardless selfportraitthatJamesRubincallstheonlydirectreferenceto theCommune.
4. Courbets letter is reproduced in Jules Castagnary, Gustave Courbet et la Colonne Vendme: Plaidoyer pour un ami mort, ann, ed. Bertrand Tillier (Tusson, Charente: Du Lrot, 2000), 38. 5. Georges Boudaille, Gustave Courbet: Painter in Protest (Greenwich, CT: New York Graphic Society, 1969), 124.

Fig. 1: Gustave Courbet, Pommes et poires, 187172, Oil on canvas. As reproduced in Laurence de Cars, et. al., Gustave Courbet (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2008), g. 208.

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CATHERINE WALWORTH Courbet was sentenced to serve six months at Pariss SaintePlagieprisonandto payane of500 francs.6 Hewas now despisedbymanyformercolleagues,viliedinthe press asacolumnarde,andcaricaturedasthenewNapoleonatop theVendmecolumnsemptypedestal.7 HishometownofOr nansremovedCourbetssculptureFisherboyfromitsfountain andreturnedittohisfamily.In1873,Courbetwasadditionally chargedthefull priceofthe columns restoration, an amount reported as323,091 fr. 68 c.8 He was the only private citizen forcedtoreimburseFrancefortheurbandestruction. Havinglivedthroughtheseeventsandbeenonthelos ingside,notoncebuttwice,itseemsunimaginablethatCour
6. In 1882, Courbets friend Jules Castagnary, also a lawyer and art critic, tried to resuscitate Courbets reputation by writing a lengthy defence of the artist that included the admissions of guilt by Flix Pyat and Paschal Grousset, former members of the Commission of Artists. Linda Nochlin has situated Castagnarys defense of Courbets politics within the critics plan to establish France as the artistic leader of Europe, particularly in the eld of landscape painting. For a full discussion, see Nochlins The DePoliticization of Gustave Courbet, Courbet (New York: Thames and Hudson, 2007), 116 27. 7. Ironically, this satirical image would have been actualized later in the Soviet Union, but for very different reasons, if Vladimir Lenins plan to include a statue of Courbet in his series of propaganda portrait monuments had been realized. 8. Castagnary, 64.

Fig. 2: Barricade and Communards on rue Sedaine at the intersection of rue Saint-Sabin. View taken in the axis of rue Sedaine looking east. At right, no. 18 and at left no. 16 of rue Saint-Sabin. March 18, 1871. Bibliothque Historique de la Ville de Paris.

bet wouldavoid them inhis paintings. On avery basiclevel, thesubjectoffood,whichhadtakenondesperatemeaningfor Parisiansthat winter, has now become themainprotagonist. Puttingaphotograph ofaCommunard barricadenext to one of Courbets heaps of fruit also begs for formal connections. (Fig.1and2) It is only recently that art historians are beginning to reevaluatethesepaintingsandlookfornewmeanings.Inthe 2008 catalogue to the Metropolitan Museum of Arts major Courbetretrospective,LaurencedeCarswrote: ButwiththeexceptionofSelfPortraitatSainte Plagie, theworks that he painted between the

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THE FRUITS OF HARD LABOR fall of1871andJuly1873the dateofhisdepar tureinto exilewereinvented, ina perfect ico nographical rupture withlivedevents. However, under theirsilences andthe apparentneutrality of their subjects, Courbets paintings echo the torment of the year 187071 . . . If in the end these repeated signs were surely not exempt from commercial ulterior motives, they never theless appear mostly to have been a means of exorcisinganepisodethat markedapoint ofno returninhislifeandcareer.9 DeCarsrefers to the fact thatCourbet backdatedsome later stilllifesto1871andaddedSte.Plagieto someeventhough theywereobviouslydoneafter hisreleasefrom prison. These strangemoveshavebeen seenaseitherpsychological oreco nomical constructs, or both. Courbet scholar Jeannene Przy blyski described these bloodred signatures as an utterance out of place associated with grati and tattoo culture in nineteenthcentury French prisons and I think this is one of themostinterestingideas.10Butitisstrangetotalkaboutvery masculine concepts such as these in the same breath as do mesticinteriorswithfruitonlacetablecloths. Stilllife was experiencing a springtime in the mid nineteenthcentury.ArtcriticJulesCastagnarysaidin1863that stilllife painters were multiplying like rodents, so much so they might bring the whole academic establishment down.11 Whilestilllifewasstill lowestontheinstitutionalizedhierar chy,intimatelysizedpaintingsofportablegoodshadaplacein the hearts and homes of the bourgeoisie. There was a new vogueforseventeenthandeighteenthcenturyFrench,Dutch, and Spanish stilllifes.12 The 1860s began with Philippe Burty organizing an exhibition at Louis Martinets gallery of over fortyJean Simon Chardinstilllifes.13 It ended with themas sivegiftoftheLaCazecollectiontotheLouvrein1869,includ ing ChardinsLaBriochefrom 1763 which inspiredanhomage byManetin1870.14 Courbets young and old Realist friends were having successwithstilllifethroughoutthe1860s,includingAntoine Vollon and Henri FantinLatour.15 Courbet, however, was not interested in stilllife as a subject. Before SaintePlagie, he
9. Laurence de Cars, The Experience of History: Courbet and the Commune, Gustave Courbet (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2008), 411. 10. Jeannene Marie Przyblyski, Le Parti Pris des Choses: French Still Life and Modern Painting, 18481876, Ph.D Dissertation (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996), 260, n57; 261. 11. Jules Castagnary, Salons 2 (Paris, 1892), 161. Quoted in John W. McCoubrey, The Revival of Chardin in French Still-Life Painting, 18501870, The Art Bulletin 46, no. 1 (Mar., 1964): 41 12. Petra Ten-Doesschate Chu, The Most Arrogant Man in France: Gustave Courbet and the Nineteenth-Century Media Culture (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007), 142. 13. Gabriel P. Weisberg, and William S. Talbot, Chardin and the Still-Life Tradition in France (Cleveland: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1979), 39. 14. It is an interesting convergence of timelines that Courbet was in charge of storing and preserving the Louvres collections so soon after the receipt of the La Caze gift in 1869. 15. Bonvin also advised collectors like Louis La Caze, and was particularly helpful authenticating Chardins. See Weisberg and Talbot for more on Bonvins relationship to collectors and the importance of Chardin in the reappraisal of still-life in nineteenth-century France.

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CATHERINE WALWORTH onlybrieyexperimentedwithitin1862and1863.Theseoral stilllifes were directly inspired by a twoweek stay in Sain tongewithtienneBaudry,anavidhorticulturalistwithamaz inggardensandanextensivelibraryonthesubject.16Courbets owersareexuberantlyloose,even decorative,incomparison to the denseness of his later fruit.17 They are like postcards fromacoastalsummerofeasypleasureforCourbet,whoselet tersfromtheregiongushabouthappyfriends,asuccessfulex hibition,andanewlove.18 Ontheotherhand,when hewantedtomakeablatant statement that winter hepaintedReturn from the Conference (1863),ananticlericalscenelledwithdrunkenpriests.Itwas made to be rejected by the Salon, which it was. It is only knownfromblackandwhitephotographstodaybecauseitwas laterpurchasedsothatitcouldbedestroyed.Sothereisnoth ing in his owers that suggests they havean ulterior motive likehis priestsbut thatisnot to saytheydidnothave ulte riormeanings.LaurencedeCarshaspointedoutthatCourbet usedwordplayandoralsymbolism,thekindeasilypickedup fromBaudryandhislibrary.Onepaintinginparticular,Mari golds in a Vase, is a perfect example. In the exhibition cata loguenext to the titleit read: Worries pluck the petals from therosesoflife.Worries,inFrench,issoucis.Italsomeans marigolds.19 This idea of Courbets wordsmithing and ex panding the meaning of stilllife through allegory may be a cluetosomeofhispostCommuneworksaswell. Courbet had never produced a fruit stilllife until Ste.Plagie.Onehasto ask whyhechosenotto paintprison life or his fellow Communards. The only such examples we have are in a sketchbook carried into captivity. He sketched Communardsbeing marchedtoVersailles,orheapedtogether in Confederates at the GreatStables at Versailles.Again, these anonymousCommunardbodiesseemphysicallyrelatedto his arrangementsoffruit.The prison forbadeCourbetto paintat all when hearrived.Theylaterallowed him materials, but no lightormodel,sohissisterZobroughtsimplethingswithher on hervisits:Ibringhim owers,fruitsformodels.Iencour age him to paint them, even inside his room; it will distract him, she wrote.20 He painted one selfportrait of himself as prisoner,butnotuntilatleasttwoyearsafterhisrelease.
16. On August 17, a fte champtre took place at Port-Berteau in Courbets honor. For an in-depth look at this period of Courbets life and work, see Roger Bonniot, Gustave Courbet en Saintonge (Paris: Librairie C. Klincksieck, 1973). 17. Thophile Gautier expressed the hope in 1869 that Courbet would turn again to stilllife because it was here he had displayed his most pleasing painterliness.Les ralistes nadmettent pas larrangement, soit; mais alors il faut tre scrupuleusement vrai comme les Flamands, comme les Hollandais, comme les Espagnols; imiter la nature avec la conscience dOstade, de Vlasquez ou de Chardin; rien de plus, cela sufrait. M. Courbet aurait pu russir dans cette voie en se bornant aux natures mortes, aux paysages et aux types rustiques, car ses dbuts il avait des qualits de peintre. Il attrapait bien le ton local, et savait rendre avec une pte solide et une brosse ferme les objets qui posaient devant lui. Thophile Gautier, Salon de 1869, Le Journal ofciel (16 Juin 1869), reproduced in Thophile Gautier, Le Watteau du Laid, ed. Christine Sagnier (Biarritz: Atlantica, 2000), 82. 18. Courbet even boasts of being carried in triumph by the ladies of Saintes. Letter to Albert de La Fizelire [Port-Berteau, September? 1862], in Chu, Letters of Gustave Courbet, ed. & trans. Petra ten-Doesschate Chu (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1992), 6267: 21213. 19. De Cars, 3267. 20. Letter from Zo Reverdy to Mme Jolicler, in Charles Lger, Courbet et son temps (Paris: Les ditions Universelles, 1948), 148.

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THE FRUITS OF HARD LABOR Becausehewasinexcruciatingpain,Courbetwastrans ferred from Ste.Plagie after ten weeksto thesanatorium of Dr. Duval in Neuilly for surgery on his painful hemorrhoids. Servingouttherest ofhissentencethere,theartistcontinued topaintstilllifesandtosignandmisdatethemwith1871and Ste.Plagie.21Dr.Duvalsisthesettingofthemostambitious ofthese,Apples,Pears,andPrimrosesonaTable.Arthistorians are overwhelmingly distracted by thepaintingsbourgeois in teriorwithmantle,confortable,framedlandscape,androbe,as ifsomeonehasjustleftthesceneandanactualpersonwillbe backmomentarily.Butitisthetriangularcompositionoffruit heapedon thetable that dominates the sceneandcreates ac tion. These apples and pears are anything but dead nature andseemalmosttobepullingbackthecurtainthatbisectsthe canvastostormthetoocomfortabledomesticinterior,notun like the mood in Eugne Delacroixs famous Liberty Leading thePeoplefrom1830.22 Thisisaninterestingthought.Couldthesefruitsbere placementsforpeople?MichaelFrieddescribesCourbetsfruit in an anthropomorphic manner, but as an erotic metaphor forthefemalebody.Friedspotsanavelhere,abreastthere,an eyeoverthere.23 Iwouldagreethat manyofhiscompositions haveanthropomorphicfruit. Howeverit is rare for Courbets referencetobeasblatantasPommes,poire,etgrenade.Rather, his body references come from a dense weight, so palpable thatyoucanfeelthepressureofoneappleonanother.Thereis aform of communicationandisolation between them. These arethequalities that might leadoneto seethemasstandins for his fellow soldiers and prisoners. His piles of round fruit might also recall the randomness and immediacy of the cobbledtogetherbarricades.Bysimulatingthebasicshapesof revolution he avoids graphic literal violence, something that no one would have purchased from him at this point. The closest thingwould haveto be Courbetssplayed open pome granates. Compare these to the more reserved version by Chardin in Grapes and Pomegranates (Raisins et grenades) whicharemoreabouttheparchmentlikewhiteskinthanthe bloodredseeds,andweseeadierentemphasis. BesidesCourbetsneedto sellpaintings,theremightbe anotherreasontoreenactthebarricadeswithdummyfruit.In examiningthecreativeresponsetotrauma,HeinzKohut nds
21. Eugne Boudin, Amand Gautier, and Claude Monet all came to see Courbet in Neuilly. When they left, Boudin took with him Pommes rouges and Gautier took Fleurs de pcher. Leger, 145. 22. This work commemorates the peoples uprising against the Bourbon king, Louis XVIs brother Charles X, and the creation of a restricted constitutional monarchy under the citizen-king Louis-Philippe in 1830. Courbet referenced this composition after the political uprisings in 1848. His version, a masthead worked up quickly for Le Salut Public, economically acknowledges Delacroixs triangular composition. T. J. Clark, Image of the People: Gustave Courbet and the 1848 Revolution (London: Thames and Hudson, 1973), 48. Clark offers an in-depth look at life in Paris among Courbets Bohemian friends as political events were playing out in this era, and his maneuvering into a signicant body of work that included The Studio, The Stonebreakers, and The Burial at Ornans which serve to establish his shift away from the Romanticism of Courbets former friend Charles Baudelaire, and a maturing development of both artistic Realism and political populism. 23. See Michael Fried, Courbet and Anthropomorphism, Courbets Realism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), 23854.

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CATHERINE WALWORTH thatthebuersanartisthasbuiltupoveralifetimecomeinto play during a traumatic experience. One possible coping mechanismistocreatework,andasecondistocreateanideal messianic character, a transference to carry the load.24 EugeneDelacroixs Liberty Leading the People would seem to t this denition, with Liberty as the French national It girl Marianne.Buthowdoweplaceaheapoffruitincomparison? Kohuts idealized power gure can be anyone who holds a world view dierent from the ruling power. I might suggest that nature itself could hold a similar place, particularly in Courbets case, where nature was a source of early and sus tainedcomfort.Healwaysmadeitknownthathewasfromthe provincesratherthanthecity. Afterhisnalreleasehepaintedthreestilllifesoftrout that are often lumped together with his socalled captivity paintings.AccordingtoFried,thetroutsdeadbodiesstilltied totheirlinesmayexpressCourbetsfeelingsofpersecutionand failing health.25 Others haveassociatedthem with the sh of Christiansymbolism,theDescent from theCross,orSaintSe bastians martyrdom.26 But these are all symbols the anti religiousCourbetwouldhardlyhaveused.Moreinterestingly, one reviewer in 1874 saw Courbets rst trout painting and wrote, I ndin it memories ofthe Communeof Paris andI saytomyself:thesetrout,sounappetizing,dotheynotresem blealittlethoseshoftheSeine,exhaustedanddying,during theblockadeofParis?27 Courbet intended to inscribe his rst trout painting with One seesthat its goodto be in prison.28 Courbet had narrowly escaped the fate of thousands of Communards, rounded up and shot against the walls of Pre Lachaise. By comparison, his months in prison followed by a rest in the countrysidemake him seem likea sh caught and mercifully thrownback.DeCars,too,seesCourbetstroutasasignofhis status as a relievedsurvivor. In the end, the painting came with the inscription In vinculis faciebat (It was made in chains).29 Soaftersurvivingthewarandrevolution,apersecution trial, and surgery,Courbet painted fruit ratherthan paintings thatwouldstirupmoretroubleforhimself.Norwashealone in avoiding violent Commune scenes, especially considering how many artists had been Communards. Jery Kaplow has
24. Douglas B. Emery, Self, Creativity, Political Resistance, Political Psychology 14, no. 2, Special Issue: Political Theory and Political Psychology (Jun., 1993): 35153. 25. Fried, 250. 26. De Cars, 426. 27. LEstafette, May 20, 1874, quoted in de Cars, 426. 28. Letter from Gustave Courbet to Eduard Pasteur, Ornans [February 20, 1873], Chu, Letters of Gustave Courbet, 73-16: 486. 29. This piece recalls Alexandre Decamps Still-Life from 1858, now in the Cleveland Museum of Art, in which two sh hang behind a table set with stein, bread, and cheese. Descamps often inscribed his still-lifes with Latin. This work reads in Latin, It is Virtuous and Great to Live on Little.

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THE FRUITS OF HARD LABOR writtenon ParissartistsandtheCommuneandsuggeststhat the Commune was too shortlived to have more than a few paintingsdone of it.30 Onemight argue that it also hadvery few friendly survivors to paint such homages. ProCommune works are few, but includeHenri Philippoteauxs Final Battle at PreLachaise,AlfredRollsExecutionofaBuglerduringthe Commune,andEdouardManetsCivilWarandTheBarricade.31 Kaplow says it is caricature, lithography, and quick sketches that eshed out the Commune as events were happening rather than painting.32 Themost vibrant cultural debate took placewithintherapidrespeedofcaricature.33 Caricaturetookointhepressdecadesearlier,particu larlyaroundtheuprising against theBourbon king CharlesX andthecreationoftheJulyMonarchyin1830.34Beforefound ing thesatirical journalsLeCaricatureandLeCharivari,Char les Philipon famously transformed the new king Louis PhilippesheavyjowlsandnarrowforeheadintoLaPoire(The Pear),afruitequatedinstreetlingowithidiotorfathead.35 Becausecaricatures inspired streetgrati, thePear wassoon everywhere.36Itstoodforthepeoplesannoyanceattheircon tinual loss of power after the hardfought revolution of 1789 andthe failure of LouisPhilippe to uphold his promisesas a Citizen King. For his caricature craze, Philipon repeatedly went to prison at SaintePlagie and had his journal seized twentyeighttimes.Hedrewonepearonhiscellwallforeach dayofcaptivity. During the relatively liberal July Monarchy, which lastedfrom1830until1848,politicalprisonersservedtheirsen tences inthesocalledPavilion ofPrinces sectionof Sainte Plagie where things were easier. In 1832, Charles Joseph TravisdeVillersslithographWhatFunnyHeads!appearedin LaCaricature. Belowit read Soldat theeditorsshop at Ste. Plagie (Political Section), where Philipon was most likely currentlyincarcerated.37 Thissetsaveryinterestingprecedent toCourbetlatersigninghisworkwithSte.Plagie. Philiponsfriend HonorDaumieralso servedtimefor hiscaricatureofthekinginGargantua.He,too,recreatediton the prison wall. Daumier noted the particular prevalence of thepear inandamong theregularprison grati.38 Onecant besurethatsomeofthesepearswerestillaroundwhenCour bet served his time in the prison, especially since he was
30. Jeffrey Kaplow, The Paris Commune and the Artists, Revolution & Reaction: The Paris Commune, 1871, ed. John Hicks and Robert Tucker (The Massachusetts Review, 1973), 160. 31. Jacquelynn Baas has demonstrated that Manets Civil War lithograph was likely altered by the censors cancellation marks in order for it to be published in 1871, most noticeably the white ag in the hand of the dead Communard. Jaquelynn Baas, Edouard Manet and Civil War, Art Journal 45, no. 1 (Spring 1985): 41. 32. Kaplow, 15860. Kaplows examples include Courbets prison sketchbook, as well as Manets lithographs The Barricade and The Civil War. 33. For a discussion of caricatures importance on both sides of the 1871 revolution, see Linda Nochlin, Courbet, the Commune, and the Visual Arts, in Courbet (New York: Thames & Hudson, 2007), 8494. Nochlin especially highlights the use of the feminine gure as a recurring motif. 34. Thanks to the high percentage of single page lithographs, or feuillitons, that sold for framing, social critique reached a larger international audience than just the liberal Republican newspapers with their limited circulations. For more on the rise of lithography and its use by Philipon and his stable of artists, see Beatrice Farwell, The Charged Image: French Lithographic Caricature, 1816 1848 (Santa Barbara: Santa Barbara Museum of Art, 1989). 35. Elise K. Kenney and John M. Merriman, The Pear: French Graphic Arts in the Golden Age of Caricature (South Hadley, MA: Mount Holyoke College Art Museum, 1991), 100. 36. William Henry Thackerays The Paris Sketch Book (1888) contains the following recollection: Every one who was at Paris . . . must recollect the famous poire which was chalked upon all the walls of the city, and which bore so ludicrous a resemblance to Louis Philippe. Quoted in Kenney and Merriman, 94. 37. The actual dates of Philipons incarceration around this time are under debate, but according to Kenney, it is very possible that the editor truly was imprisoned at this time. See Kenney, 55, n. 4. 38. Howard P.Vincent, Daumier and His World (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1968), 3334.Vincent cites a unique le in the Bibliothque Nationale titled Gazette de Sainte-Plagie et de toutes les maisons de dtention, which was published from January to December 1833. These les include a description of the grafti in Daumiers cell.

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CATHERINE WALWORTH housedwith thegeneralcriminalsand not inthePavilionof Princes, but it istemptingto think somemayhavesurvived. Forsure,thepearpoppedupagainasanattackagainstAdol pheThiers,leaderofthefailedNationalGovernment,whohad once helped put LouisPhilippe, symbolized by the pear, on thethrone.39ThesemighthaveinspiredCourbettosendpears, descendedfromsubversive,streetlevelgratiintothegallery. CourbetthedisgracedCommunardwasnowthenewest butt ofjokes.Frdric Job drewtheartist as a barrelwearing art salesman with the fallen column. The accompanying text says that heavoidedsevererpunishmentbyenactingcourbet tes,orscrapingbows.40Ifdoubleentendrecreptinto Courbets workasaresponse, itwouldopenupthesestilllifestonew investigation, one with an arguably impossible job of sorting out what Courbet had witnessed, and possibly repressed, in bothvisualsignsandverbalpuns. ItisdiculttoknowtheexacttitlesofCourbetspaint ings inFrench becausethey areoftenpublishedwithgeneral, descriptive names. We can imagine these are close to the originals,though,sinceCourbet refersinaletterto hispaint ingOrangesetGrenades(OrangesandPomegranates),41atitle just oneletter short of becoming orages et grenades, which translatestoriotsandgrenadesinFrench.Thetermforhand grenades in fact derived from the French for pomegranate, which it resembled, right down to its belly full of shrapnel. Bismarck's armies littered Paris with two to three hundred grenadesperdayinJanuary1871.42 Grenadeslledwithpotas sium picaratewereusedagainstthecommunardsby the Ver saillese.Conveniently,thesamewordinFrenchforpear,poire, also happens to mean powderask. Courbet the hunter would bequiteusedto carryingone. So eventhoughCourbet chosenot topaintbloodycitizensoldiers,heheapedupmili tarywordsintobarricadelikeforms. Courbetwasalwayscenterstageinhisownwork,how ever,andhisstilllifesmakeroom foraparticularlydirectref erence. What did fruit usually sit in but a basket, known in French asa corbeille? Interestingly, Fruits dans une Corbeille, Pommeset Poires (Fruit in aBasket:ApplesandPears) isthe only one set beside a window, just as the only selfportrait Courbetdidofhimselfasaprisonershowshimperchedbeside abarredwindow.Agameispotentiallyatworkinthesepaint
39. See Hollis Clayons discussion of feminized caricatures of men during and after the siege of Paris for a description of how the pear was used as a symbol of Adolphe Thiers former Orleanist sympathies. Paris in Despair: Art and Everyday Life under Siege (18701871) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 14043. 40. This work of caricature, Les Communeux peints par eux-mmes (Oct. 28, 1871) is notable for giving Courbet the avatar of a round vegetable by calling him a courge, or squash. The last two couplets of the poem include puns on Courbets name, showing how common wordplay was: Pinc dans un placard, je nai plus souf mot; Amis et dfenseurs ont dit: Cest un idiot! Et jai courb le front, murmurant, sun air bte: Pour la re-bou-lon-ner, ma bourse et toute prte Quajouter maintenant, si ce nest quen vieux rat Je vais menfromager! . . . Sur ma tombe on lira! Courbet t des tableaux , Courbet t des . . . boulettes, Et, pour sauver sa peau, Courbet t des courbettes!!! The print is included in Charles Lger, Courbet Selon des Caricatures et Les Images, preface by Thodore Duret (Paris: Paul Rosenberg, 1920), 102. 41. Correspondance de Courbet, ed. Chu (Paris: Flammarion, 1996), 7178; 398. 42. Moritz Busch, Bismarck in the FrancoPrussian War, 18701871 (New York: Charles Scribners Sons, 1884), 194.

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THE FRUITS OF HARD LABOR ings, so subtlethat evenCourbet might not alwayshavebeen awareofwhyhechosecertainsubjects.Ifso,itwouldcompli cate,ifnot explain,whytheseembeddedmeaningsfellunripe and unrecognized in front of their audience. We know that just a few years before Courbet entered prison, its director loved to show visitors the prisons wall drawings by inmate Charles GilbertMartin, editor and caricaturist of Le Don Quichotte. Thedrawingswere thinlyveiledattacks on Napo leon III, a fact the emperors public servant failed to recognize.43 A cartoon by Faustin spoofs one of the stilllifes that Courbet submittedto the Salon of1872.WhileCourbet liber ated the fruit from interior tabletops and set them outside, they are shackled by a scrawling, red Ste. Plagie. The car tooncommentarysaysthefruitshavefallenfromthetreeun ripeafterhavingspentsixmonthsintheshade.ClearlyFaustin is equating Courbet and his sixmonth prison sentence with theoversizedfruit nowlyingrottingontheground. Courbets stilllifewasrejectedbythejuryin1872. When heannounced therejectionoftheartiststwo submissions, ErnstMeissonier saidtheSalonshouldconsiderCourbetdead.44 A caricature by fellow communard Andr Gill on the occasionofCourbetsactualdeathin1878givesCourbetsfruit thelastword.ItshowsCourbetasalowclasswandering fruit seller,thekind ofoutcast withoutapermitalways ontherun from police, with a corbeille of pears.45 It reads, The late Courbet, enterstherefore,taking hispears.Theyarenot sold. They are returned. Considering the fact that this is how he wascommemoratedat hisdeath,asthe painter who went to jail, defamed by playwright Dumas ls as lower than a slug, andas thepainterofpearsimages vastlydierent than the massive personality we memorialize todayit is interesting howlittleattentiontheseworkshavedrawn.
43. Robert Justin Goldstein, The War for the Public Mind: Political Censorship in NineteenthCentury Europe (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2000), 165. 44. Meissonier and LExclusion de Courbet, Le Figaro, 10 April 1872, front page: Nous devons rejeter M. Courbet de notre sein; il doi tre moret pour nous. 45. Merchants had to be approved to run stalls in Paris. Those who failed to establish year-long residency in Paris or maintain a record of good conduct were rejected for permits granting them rights to run a xed location. Instead, they had to walk the streets of Paris hawking their wares, carrying their goods and moving continually. By showing Courbet as one of these migratory salesmen, it emphasizes his reputation for punishably bad behavior. In this same caricature, Courbet stands outside the LOdeon theater where a play is advertised by Alexandre Dumas ls, one of Courbets most vitriolic denouncers after the fall of the Commune. For more on the art communitys turn against Courbet in the 1870s, see Ting Chang, Rewriting Courbet: Silvestre, Courbet, and the Bruyas Collection after the Paris Commune, Oxford Art Journal 21, no. 1 (1998): 10720.

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