A Political and a Pictorial Tradition Used in Gustave Courbet's Real Allegory

After the voting of the Universal Exposition jury during March and April of 1855, Courbet wrote to his friend and patron Alfred Bruyas: "Terrible things have happened to me. They have just refused my Burial and my last picture the Atelier as well as the portrait of Champfleury. They declared it was necessary at any cost to arrest the progress of my movement which has had a disastrous effect on French art."2 In this same letter Courbet explained his plan to set up an independent retrospective exhibit on a site opposite the official art exposition. Courbet's Pavilion of Realism opened at noon, June 28, 1855. A catalogue with a statement by the artist (the "Realist Manifesto") was available for ten centimes. Listed as "Number 1" was The Atelier of the Painter. Scholars have always been puzzled by the juxtaposition of the words "real" and "allegory" in the subtitle of Courbet's most important work. Champfleury was the first to voice confusion in his letter to Mme. Sand of September, 1855, which he published. He wrote: "Here are two words that clash with each other and bother me. ... An 'allegory' cannot be 'real' any more than a reality' can be 'allegorical ...'"3 But Realism is not reality, and, as an artistic style, can be allegorical like any other. This study is a re-examination of the central section of The Atelier of the Painter, identifying two allegorical traditions apparent there. This section portrays a nude model, a little boy, a white cat and Courbet himself, in the act of painting a landscape (Fig. 1). The traditional image that comes closest to the presentation and elements seen in the central section of Courbet's painting, so far as I have been able to find, is Johann Saenredam's engraving after a drawing by Goltzius, Painter Painting a Young Woman (Fig. 2). The Saenredam and the Courbet agree in number, type, and placement of all the key foreground figures: painter, nude model, little boy, and cat. The engraving has been identified by George Koltzsch as an Allegory of Sight, in which Love holds the mirror for Venus, the model, combined with an artist's selfportrait and other emblems of vision.4 Yet in spite of obvious similarities, differences between Courbet's painting and the print raise questions regarding Courbet's recasting of this traditional emblem of Vision in a "realist" mode. Courbet's model does not pose, but stands behind the painter, who executes a landscape. Paradoxically, this increases an awareness of the image's emblematic or allegorical role, while giving a genre quality to the scene. The child has no wings, wears peasant clothes, and holds no mirror; and Courbet's cat is white rather than striped. Yet, the repetition of the same four figures in a comparable combination leads one to investigate further the emblem's relevance to Courbet's "real allegory." It is too similar to be coincidental. On the other hand, it is not claimed here that Courbet saw the Saenredam. Both works represent the existence of a continuing tradition which necessarily included lost images. And commentators have in fact identified the figures in Courbet's painting as serving the same allegorical function they do in the emblem, although these writers have apparently overlooked its significance. In 1856, Theophile Silvestre identified the nude model in The Atelier as Truth.s More recently, Georges Boudaille, Werner Hofmann, Jack Lindsay, and Benedict Nicolson have agreed with this attribution.6 Linda Nochlin and Nicolson have further indicated that the model also functions as an inspiring Muse.7 The nudity of the model who has cast artifice (her wearing apparel) aside is the major point on which this attribution of Truth is based. The tradition of the emblem of Vision ties this down more securely and relates it to the other images. The model also represents Beauty. The precedents for this attribution beginning with the story of Apelles and Campaspe are dealt with by Matthias Winner,8 and various Venuses in the guise of model are presented by Koltzsch,9 confirming this equally viable interpretation. Courbet himself linked both Truth and Beauty with vision in his Open Letter to Students, of 1861: