Table of Contents for this Episode
[00:00:00]
Annie: This is Join Us in France, episode 620, six cent vingt.
Bonjour, I’m Annie Sargent, and Join Us in France is the podcast where we take a conversational journey through the beauty, culture, and flavors of France.
Today on the podcast: Gustave Courbet
Annie: Today, I bring you a conversation with Elyse Rivin, the art historian of Toulouse Guided Walks, about Gustave Courbet, the painter from Ornans in the Doubs, who refused to follow the rules of the French art establishment.
We talk about the paintings that caused scandals, his politics and exile in Switzerland, and what to see around Ornans today. From his museum to the Loue Valley. Before we start, this show runs on listener support. If you want to work with me [00:01:00] directly, I do itinerary consults.
I’ve written eight tours of Paris on the VoiceMap app, and I can take you on day trips from Toulouse, where I live, in my electric car. Everything is at joinusinfrance.com/boutique.
Bootcamp Thoughts
Annie: Bootcamp 2026 wrapped up just a few days ago, and later in this episode, I’ll share some of my thoughts about how the week went, the people who came, and what comes next for Join Us in France events.
Meet Courbet
Annie: Bonjour, Elyse.
Elyse: Bonjour, Annie.
Annie: Oh, what a fun topic we have today. We are going to talk about a part of France which has not come up very much on the podcast at all.
It’s the Doubs, so Department 50 in the Bourgogne-Franche-Comté area. But specifically, we are going to emphasize a very [00:02:00] famous person from this area, Gustave Courbet.
Elyse: Courbet, yes.
Annie: An artist that I’m sure you’ve seen his work. He’s featured prominently at the Orsay Museum, at the Marmottan Museum, in many museums. If you see something really striking that you’re like, “Oh, whoa, what? What was that?” It might be a Courbet.
Elyse: It might be. It might be. But at the same time, a lot of his work is actually not what we would consider anymore to be striking. It’s just very classical landscapes. He did a huge number of landscapes. He did seascapes. He did an enormous, of course, number of, portraits, and he’s famous for two or three humongous paintings. He’s a painter who was much maligned in his lifetime, and who, if he came back now, might be happy to know that there’s a whole section of the Orsay Museum devoted just to him and to his [00:03:00] work, you know?
Where To See His Art
Elyse: This is a man who did not live that long. He actually died at the age of 57 in 1877, but he was so prolific that officially there are over 1,000 paintings that he has done. I mean, this is an incredible amount because even Picasso, who was extremely prolific, I don’t know if we can say that there are 1,000 paintings that are officially his.
They’re distributed pretty much everywhere. There’s, of course, the huge section of the Orsay. There’s also a part of his collection in the Petit Palais, which is just across the river. The Fabre Museum in Montpellier. He became friends with one of the people who created the museum, the Fabre Museum. It’s a wonderful museum, by the way. And so there’s a nice collection of his work there. The LilleBeaux-Arts Museum has a bunch.
I went through at the very end of doing all the research and theshow notes. I scrolled down to get an idea of which were the museums or the cities, and [00:04:00] I kind of included them, butthat have a bunch of his work. And then there’s a whole lot of his work distributed among the Beaux-Arts museums in the United States, which was a place that accepted his work quite early on in general. They were also very welcoming of all the new trends that happens in the middle of the 19th century. So there’s at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, but Philadelphia, Washington, Austin, the major cities that have art museums. His work is really pretty much everywhere, which doesn’t take away from the value of it. The most recent auction saw a couple of his paintings go for several million. This is a man who had the chance of living off a stipend given by his parents for about half of his adult life, and otherwise would never have been able to even have enough money to buy the paint to make his paintings. So it’s kind of the irony of history, you know, that this is what has happened. And as you say, he comes from a small village called Ornans in what is considered to be… Now, [00:05:00] you say it’s Franche-Comté. I’ve always considered it to be the Haut-Jura.
Annie: Well, that’s the historical name, but…
Elyse: That’s the historical name, okay.
Annie: It’s officially, it’s part of the Bourgogne-Franche-Comté region.
Yeah. And it is, like from Ornans, if you wanted to drive to Switzerland, the nearest Swiss town is 65 kilometers to the east.
Elyse: Yeah.
Annie: So it would take an hour and a half maybe. Small roads, mostly small roads around Ornans. The major town nearby is Besançon, exactly, with 120,000 people, more or less. It looked absolutely glorious from the road, but I didn’t have time.
Road Trip To Ornans
Annie: So to explain the reason why I stopped there is because of you. Because I was telling you about my trip, so I was coming back from Metz, and I said I was going to stop in Mulhouse because there’s a Costco there.
Elyse: We [00:06:00] go from Courbet to Costco, you understand, in this podcast.
Annie: And so I spent the night in Mulhouse, so I could wake up early…
Elyse: And go to Costco.
Annie: … Go to Costco as soon as it opens, which is 10:00 AM, which is, like, too late, honestly, for an early bird like me. And then I was in the Costco until 1:00 or something. Then I got in my car and drove to Ornans, and you had told me, “Oh, you are going in that area. You have to stop at the Courbet Museum.” And I thought, “Well, okay.” I mean, I had heard of Courbet, but I didn’t realize how important it was.
Elyse: Right.
Annie: And so I did stop in Ornans for a couple of hours. I could have spent much longer. Honestly, it would’ve been worth an overnight stop, but I didn’t take the time because then I was moving on to sleep in Le Puy-en-Velay which is quite a bit further south and a bit east. I was heading towards Toulouse. I was heading home.
So I had like six and a half hours of driving time that day, plus my stop at [00:07:00] Costco, plus my stop at the museum, plus charge stops and things like that. I didn’t get to Le Puy-en-Velay until late. You know, it was a long driving day, let’s put it that way.
At any rate, a lot of it was gorgeous, and I drove past Besancon. So between Mulhouse and Besancon you have the A64, I think. It’s a big major road, Autoroute. And then you’re, between Besancon and Ornans, it’s just a D road. It’s a good D road, but it’s like you’re going slowly. You’re going 70 most of the way, and so it’s slow, and you get to see these beautiful landscapes.
Elyse: It’s gorgeous, yeah.
Annie: And even more so between Ornans and Le Puy-en-Velay, oh, it is just gorgeous, gorgeous. And several times I wanted to stop to take photos of something really stupid. So you have the road, you have a hillside, and you have cows chilling on the hillside, under a tree usually. And the cows just [00:08:00] lie there in little groups. And so you have five, six cows, and a little further you have five, six cows, and they just lie there, like completely content with their lives.
Elyse: It sounds like you’re discovering the countryside for the first time.
Annie: No, I’ve seen it, but the fact that it was a bit hilly made it even more scenic.And I think this area is mostly for people who are interested in art and culture but also who want to do hiking and exploring, because there’s lots of hiking opportunities from some very difficult ones to some pretty easy ones. But we’ll get to that later.
Elyse: So I think that I’m very happy actually that you did stop in Ornans. To be quite honest, I have never been. Part of the reason being that the only time that I actually crisscrossed that area, I was with my husband, who was not interested in stopping, so I learned my lesson. I have to do things like that on my own, I guess.
Ornans Museum Origins
Elyse: But, yeah, Courbet is really [00:09:00] famous, and he made the village famous. It was just a very nice, quiet village in a relatively prosperous part of what was Franche-Comté, the old designation.
Annie: Right, the Doubs department.
Elyse: The Doubs department.
And of course, he put the town on the map, let’s put it that way, the paintings that he did. And so in the museum there, there are many of his works, and then there are a few that are copies of the works that are, for instance, in the Orsay and other things. But it does in fact now, thanks to his youngest sister, who lived to be almost 100 years old, Juliette, and her descendants. She was the person who inherited basically a good part of his estate when he died. It’s thanks to her and her family that they have that many of his works and that they have the museum there.
Why Courbet Mattered
Elyse: But so I think it’s really important because let’s face it, when you see most of Courbet’s work, there are a few pieces that are [00:10:00] shocking or surprising. I think those are two different things, but I think both words are appropriate. Most of his work is not.First of all, he was born in 1819, so he was still painting, when he started to paint, in a style that was what we could almost call old-fashioned, and a lot of dark colors in some of his early works. His works, in and of themselves, most of them are not surprising, they’re not shocking. He’s got a lot of these landscapes that are the scenes around Ornans, which was a place he loved.
He did a lot of seascapes. He wrote and said when he was 21, he discovered the sea for the first time in his life. He was taken to Normandy by a friend when he had finally moved to Paris, and he wrote back to his family how gorgeous it was, the light on the sea and everything, which I totally understand. So a lot of it is what we could call subject matter that is conventional, a lot of portraits. Although later on, he got to be more shocking because of doing lots of nudes and things like [00:11:00] that.
But the reason, the real reason why he became famous and why he actually was the inspiration for the impressionists who knew him, but who were all a bit younger than him, and then the people who came after, to whatever we do today, some of it is totally wacko and ridiculous anyway, is that he was a free thinker, and he rejected what was the codification and the rigidity of the system of art in France that had existed since Louis XIV.
Academy And Salon Rules
Elyse: Louis XIV created, with the help of some other people, what are known as the academies. And basically what they did, and I don’t know if it existed in Italy, it certainly did not exist in the northern countries, because it turns out that Courbet took his inspiration mostly from work outside of France, which is also very interesting to know. But what the French did, starting with Louis XIV, was they created a system for art, just like for everything else. Like for language and [00:12:00] everything else, where they created a hierarchy of subject matter. So for instance, the most important was historical paintings.
That were big scenes.
Historical paintings, coronations, war scenes. And then you have the descending hierarchy. Somewhere in between you have portraits, which come to be important because mostly it was portraits of the royalty and the aristocrats and things like that. And then down below you have little still lifes, you have watercolors, you have pastels. But not only was there a hierarchy of which were the most important and prestigious, but you have rules about who can paint what.
In France, this is really quite something. I mean, you know, artists, breaking the rules was really dangerous in a sense. I mean, if you wanted to make it as an artist you didn’t break the rules, okay? I mean, you didn’t go to prison, but if you want to sell your work, you have to conform to all of this. And up through, into the beginning of the 19th century, most of the artists did conform [00:13:00] to these standards because the only way, unlike in the northern countries, specifically, really interestingly, Belgium and Holland, unlike those countries, in France, if you wanted to show your work and sell, you had to be accepted into what was called the Salons.
And the Salons were run by the judges of the Academy of Art. It was judged, so you submitted works, and they would decide if they like any or all or how many of these works. And, you know, sometimes you can see pictures still of what the art scene was like in those days because it’s like going to a hypermarket, basically.
You have these huge rooms that have paintings, one on top of the other, going absolutely almost all the way up to the ceiling, and it’s absurd because I don’t know how anybody really pays attention and appreciates anything, you know, that way. But if you didn’t get your work accepted into one of these Salons, then literally you didn’t get your work [00:14:00] known, and if you didn’t get your work known, you didn’t get your work sold.
So basically, this is the system that Gustave Courbet was born into.
Early Life And Training
Elyse: Now, he was born in 1819 into a relatively wealthy landed gentry family. His father at first hoped he would become an engineer, an agronomical engineer. And very quickly, he was the oldest of four children and the only son.
So they basically spoiled him. Let’s put it that way. I mean, he was the only son. They very quickly, unfortunately, saw that he was not a particularly serious student. He was not gifted in math or science, couldn’t have cared less, and from a very early age, loved to draw. And apparently was really gifted.
And I was thinking about this yesterday because, yes, there’s a lot of technique that we learn when we go to art school. I mean, I know myself. But you know, it’s like with music. Some people have a certain talent, and some people just don’t.
Annie: It helps if you catch on fast.
And you can copy fast. You know, like, there are people with [00:15:00] music, they’re going to try a few scales and just give up.
Elyse: Yeah. Exactly.
Annie: And then there are people who will just move on from the scales and do something more interesting very quickly.
Elyse: So basically that’s what happened with him. He was first tutored. He was in a Jesuit school, and then they sent him to boarding school in Besançon. And he basically was failing almost all of his classes, but what he did, and obviously this is because he was the shoo-shoo of the family, he was the son and the oldest, he said, “I can’t stand being in a boarding school. I need to live in town.” And what happened was his parents let him. And so at the age of 14, he moved into a room in some family’s house, and what he did was, instead of going to his classes at the equivalent of high school, it would’ve been an academy, he started hanging out at the art school in Besançon, which existed. This is of course after the Revolution, there are art schools in practically every city, but without enrolling officially, and he just started sitting in on classes and drawing, and they discovered that he was really talented.
And there [00:16:00] is actually, we can see, it’s online, and I’m not sure if it’s in the Orsay or where, but the first painting officially that he did at the age of 14, is a self-portrait. And of course self-portraits became one of the most significant things that he did his entire life.
Annie: I’m pretty sure it’s in Ornans.
Elyse: Is it? Did you see him sitting under a tree?
Annie: I think so.
Elyse: It’s very colorful, actually.
Annie: I don’t remember specifically, but yes, I… There were some very early paintings of hisat the Ornans Museum, yeah.
Elyse: So it’s really interesting because I can imagine that his parents, who had all these high hopes for him as being the only son in the family, basically little by little, these all fell out to the side, you know?
Paris And The Louvre
Elyse: And then eventually they sent him to Paris, hoping that if he went to law school, which was not scientific, that would fix it. You know, he would go to law school in Paris, and at least he would have some kind of, you know, prestigious situation because his mom’s family was in the law and administration, God knows what. And of course, what happened [00:17:00] was he simply started not going to class, and he started hanging out with some artists in the Latin Quarter. And basically he arrived in Paris, he was 19 years old. By the end of the first year, his parents gave up. He said, “I want to be an artist. This is what I want to do.”
And the other thing I think is interesting to know, and I’ve been really thinking about this a lot too, is that 200 years ago, in spite of the fact that this was like an upper middle class family, it was really okay to imagine wanting to be an artist. It was not like, oh, it’s scandalous. Oh, you’re going to do something horrible, or you’re never going to make a living. Manet was from that kind of a family. A lot of these people were from upper middle class families. If the son announced that he wanted to be an artist, notice only the son, then it was okay as long as there was money behind it.
Annie: Right, they needed to have some sort of family support behind it. Otherwise you’d starve, and you can’t do that.
Elyse: Right. So here he is at the age of 20 [00:18:00] in Paris, finally with his family giving him a stipend, which is really the way he existed for many years going on from there. And what did he do? He started being an, what we would call today an auditor at the Académie des Beaux-Arts of Paris because he did not want to go.Who had formed him to think like this, or did it come out of himself? I don’t know. It would be fascinating to do one of these AI things and get back into the brain of Gustave Courbet, you know? He immediately understood that he did not want to follow the rules and the restrictions of the Academy of Fine Arts.
And so what did he do? He spent a year going to the Louvre. And at the Louvre, he copied, he looked and copied and looked and copied and looked and copied, and the paintings that he was interested in, the paintings that really inspired him and gave him ideas, were the Dutch paintings, the Spanish paintings, and the Italian paintings, not the French art at all. It’s really interesting.
Now, the [00:19:00] differences. The Dutch paintings, it’s more fleshy people, fleshy women, you know, the Flemish, like Rubens. He loved Rubens. Talk about women who never went on a diet in their lives, this kind of thing. And very loose strokes. The Spanish painters, particularly the painters of Velázquez and Zurbarán, who were two very famous Spanish painters, their thing was dark, dark, like lots of black and lots of very dramatic with light and dark. So it was like he was taking ideas from all these things.
And he wrote later on, because he did write a lot about what he thought being an artist was and about what art should be. He said he believed that that’s how you learn to be an artist, by looking, looking, looking, and then figuring out how to reinterpret that for yourself.
Annie: Okay. Makes sense, yeah.
Elyse: It makes sense, but it takes a lot of courage to go against the currents of the time and to also try and find your own path in a way. We don’t think about that as much anymore because everybody does weird things, [00:20:00] and it’s not surprising when you see something totally off the wall, you know, these days. But it’s hard to imagine, I think, how much 200 years ago it was like, “No, you don’t do this. You want to be an artist? You have to follow the standard path to being what people do.”
Annie: (Mid-roll ad spot)
Salon Breakthrough
Elyse: So basically starting in 1840, and through the 1840s, every single year, he submitted works to what were the Salons. It was more or less a yearly event, and sometimes it was a little more than a year. He never gave up. I findthe tenacity that he had, it was like he never gave up, he never gave up, he never gave up. He did not have any work accepted until 1844. Four years where apparently he just painted and painted and painted. I don’t know where he stocked all of this work. He had a small room. He moved around a lot, but basically it’s all around.
Annie: Maybe he put it in his mother’s basement. Maybe.
Elyse: That would be what we would do today.
Annie: Or garage.
Elyse: He made [00:21:00] friends with some other young artists, but I mean, the names don’t even mean anything to me today. But what happened was? he was upset about not getting accepted,he just pursued his art. He just kept doing what he did. And then finally, what’s really interesting is that the painting that got accepted in 1844, so he’s 23, 24 years old, was a painting that I actually think is gorgeous. It’s called Self-Portrait with Black Dog. And it’s just gorgeous. And you can see how he has taken this lesson that he kind of learned from the Spanish about using this intense, intense, intense black.You can see at that time he’s young and still handsome, without a big, horrible beard, sitting next to his gorgeous black spaniel, and the two of them are almost entirely in black, except that you see his face, and then in the light part is the landscape in the back, which is, of course, counterintuitive to things. So it encouraged him. It’s hard, I think, even for me, to realize how just getting one work accepted [00:22:00] into a Salon like that can… You can go, “Whoopee,” you know?
Annie: Well, like he was on the right track. That’s what it’s meant. As far as the establishment was concerned, he was on the right track.
Elyse: But that was the problem, because when this work was accepted, he said, “Of all the works I have submitted since I started, this is not the one I think is interesting, but this is the one they have accepted.” He was happy to be accepted. At the same time, he was, “Nah, I want them to like my other work.” Well, what made it different?
Realism Manifesto
Elyse: Well, in fact, one of the things that made it really different was the fact that he embraced the idea of what he himself called strict realism. What does that mean? Up until that time, we can see portraits of painters that were done even a century before that, where you have very realistic portraits of people’s faces. It wasn’t the idea of the technique, it’s that in the paintings he did, he didn’t do people of the upper class. He did lower class people.
And prior to that, the two or three painters who dared do paintings of poor people, [00:23:00] they were for pathos. They were so that when you looked at the painting, and there are a couple like that in the Augustins Museum here, where you go, “Oh, those poor people, look at them, look how they’re suffering.” And he said it very clearly in his writing, he said, “No. This is to show how wonderful these people are. I am proud of them. Look at the pride you see in their faces.”
So the realism for him was not just a realism of the reality of photographically showing what somebody looked like. It was, “This is the real world. This is not the aristocratic world. This is the world I come from, and the people I like are the peasants and the local people in the village and things like that.”
So what happened was, he continues his painting. He has most of his work refused. But meanwhile, the little bit that he’s done, and with his contacts, there are people who are writing about him. And in the 19th century, especiallyI think the first half, maybe afterwards, too, art critics were taken very seriously.
They’re [00:24:00] not really anymore. I mean, because now you can just go online, and you can find pretty much anything you want. But it’s like it goes along with the fact that these were official people, who were supposedly the ones who knew what to look at and what should be seen. So some people, including Eugene Delacroix, actually started to really like his work and talk about it.
So he started to sell a little bit of his work. And then the crucial year in his life, and actually as an artist, is 1848. In 1848, he wrote a manifesto of realism. I don’t know where he gets these ideas, I haven’t got a clue.
Funeral At Ornans Scandal
Elyse: And he doesn’t mince words either, and he says, “Now that I’m starting to sell, now that people are starting to recognize my work and my talent or whatever, now I’m going to show them what I really want to do.” And one of the first things that he does is that incredible painting that, of course, is so famous, that is now in the Orsay, which is The Funeral at Ornans.
Annie: Yes. It’s a big one.
Elyse: It’s huge. It’s six meters [00:25:00] something in width.
Annie: It’s really nice. And they have a reproduction of it with kind of notes, they draw some lines, and they tell you who the people are and all of that. So it’s really interesting. You don’t just see the painting, you see kind of a, some explanation of why and who and all that.
Elyse: Right. So now there are two things that make it, besides the fact that it was the painting that made what is considered to be his rupture with the standards of the time. But also, he was very modern because starting in the 1840s, he actually started using photography to help him with his work. And of course, we’re talking about a time when photography was lured. I mean, you had to carry these horrendously big, heavy lead plates and set up the cameras and things like that. But he was well aware that if you wanted to do paintings that involved really detailed realism, that it wouldn’t be enough to just remember what things looked like, you know? And it’s one thing to have somebody sit for a portrait of their face, and it’s another one to want to do a scene [00:26:00] of I don’t know how many people are in that painting.
Annie: A lot.
Elyse: A lot, right.
Annie: And animals and carts and things.
Elyse: So what happened? Scandal.
Annie: Why?
Elyse: Because you can only do a huge painting like that for an historical scene that involves kings, queens, aristocrats.
You cannot do a big painting that important with just nobodies in a tiny village.
Annie: Well, yeah, that’s what he did. He kind of put them at the center like, this was an important moment that he wanted to show.
And yet it’s very mundane. I mean, there are funerals every day. Maybe not in a village, but funerals are common, unfortunately. They happen.
Elyse: Yeah. I have looked at that painting a lot. I’ve been to Orsay a lot. It’s not even the painting of his that I think I prefer in general. The skill of it is immense because he used several different techniques of paint to paint it. I mean, he improvised new techniques using [00:27:00] palette knives, using a cloth to do kind of stipple, of putting light paint on top of dark paint. He was really an innovator in that way. But when you look at the scene, it’s like this nice big country scene with the very detailed image of where you can identify everybody, and this is what created such a scandal, that it was just ordinary people.
Annie: That’s interesting. I would have never thought of that. But okay, yeah. I see it.
Elyse:
Politics And Provocation
Elyse: So in that time period, basically between 1848 and the beginning of the 1850s, he did several paintings that all were in that category of huge and causing a scandal.
Annie: Because the theme he had picked was a bit shocking.
Elyse: Even Delacroix, who really thought he was a gifted painter, said, ” If only you didn’t do ugly people.” Even, I think it’s in Orsay, but I’m not sure where it is, the beautiful painting of his three sisters in the countryside meeting a young girl with a dog. It’s a gorgeous painting.
Annie: I don’t recall that one.
Elyse: It’s a gorgeous painting and it’s not as dark as some of the others. It’s just a [00:28:00] lovely painting, the three young sisters, and then this other young peasant girl with her dog. And the name of the painting has to do with them giving her some money or something like that, and you see the landscape in the background. Delacroix said, ” At least he could have made his sisters prettier.”
So there’s this level of, for us, it’s kind of, like, funny, but it’s hard to, I think, imagine just how much they took this stuff seriously, okay? There’s this incredible painting he did called The Stone Breakers, where you see these three men. You can see the gnarled muscles on their arms, and they’re breaking rocks. I mean, this is in the Jura. He wanted to show real people doing real work. And you can see, because what happens to him as he gets a little bit older is that he becomes very political. And he becomes very, very political in the sense of really, today we would say he wanted to show the honor of the proletariat, it was that kind of a thing. He was very influenced by a philosopher named Proudhon, [00:29:00] who apparently is considered to be one of the fathers of the Commune, and a kind of anarchist, and he was really involved in his ideas about people and about what society should be. He was offered I think in the end of the 1850s or maybe beginning of 1860s, he was actually offered the Legion of Honor, and yesterday I read the letter that he wrote, that he sent back to them. And it’s a huge, long letter.
Courbet Rejects Honors
Elyse: It’s fascinating. I PDF’d it on my computer. Basically, he said, “I, at the same time am flattered by the idea that after all these years of criticizing my work, you would want to honor me with this, but I would never accept this honor in a million years because it is an honor that comes from a system of government that is monarchic and that has a hierarchy that I do not accept.”
Annie: But was the monarchy still on?
Elyse: Yes, he hated Napoleon III.
Annie: Ah, okay. Not a good idea.
Elyse: And this [00:30:00] was under Napoleon III that
the Legion of Honor was offered to him. So, this is his life.
Love Life And Travel
Elyse: In 1841, when he was 22, he met a woman named Virginie Binet in Normandy, who was older than him and became his mistress for a long time, over 10 years. And he had a son with her, and he named the son Désiré. Officially his name was Jean Désiré Gustave Courbet. That
was the name he was born with. He never recognized him, even though he sent money to take care of him, and actually took care of him basically all of his son’s life. He sent him money, he had him educated and everything.
But in spite of everything, he was from an upper middle class family, there was no question that he would marry this woman, who was simply the first of a whole string of mistresses, even though they stayed together for quite a number of years. That was the only child he ever had.
So he traveled a lot. He went back and forth to Holland, to Belgium, to Germany, and in all of those countries, he sold his work. There was no [00:31:00] question about the category of work or anything. His work was welcomed and bought. And that was basically where he made most of his money, in selling his work.
And then in the 1860s, he became very good friends with a British artist whom I adore, named Whistler, James Whistler, who came to France. They became very close friends, and he was one of the few people who stayed his friend right up to his death in 1877. And with him, he traveled around.
So he was constantly on the move, and half the time he was back in Ornans. And so after starting to be successful and having too much controversy around his work, he decided it was time to build a studio in Ornans, and he took a chunk of land that had belonged to his family and had built himself a studio there. So starting basically by the end of the 1850s, he was spending at least half the time in Ornans, and he loved it there. He said it wasa place that touched his heart, the landscape around there, the people in the village.
Paris Circle And Self Portraits
Elyse: He went to Paris, where he kept his studio, [00:32:00] and then he also moved from the Latin Quarter to Montmartre, where at the end of the 1860s, he became friends with Monet and Manet, who had been inspired by his use of black, and all these other artists. But they were all 15, 20 years younger than him, so he was kind of like the older guy in the group. But he was friends with them and hung out with them, and they, of course, exchanged ideas a lot. I mean, he was very much into the question of dialogue and expression. He maintained this controversy around his work all these years, and the painting we were talking about before we started, the self-portrait called Desesperé, the Desperate One, it doesn’t really work somehow translated into English, which is this incredible sort of frontal vision of this guy who looks like he is going out of his mind, you know?
Annie: Yeah, so he has longish hair, he has his hands around his face, and he has crazy eyes.
Once you’ve seen it, you can’t unsee it.
Elyse: So it’s interesting that all through his life, he did an endless number of self-portraits, and that one he [00:33:00] apparently started when his mistress broke up with him.
But he kept it for himself, and he didn’t use that as a painting that he submitted to any of the Salons. When you look at the painting, the dates cover from a time period to another time period, because he apparently just kept going back and working on it. It was his alter ego, this painting,or something like that. He got into trouble for doing a whole series of paintings of nude men. They’re not really nude. It’s weird because they’re not 100% nude, but they’re not aesthetic.There are two paintings of men wrestling, you can see the bulging muscles. Nudes have been around in painting for God knows, centuries, but his nudes, no, that didn’t pass.
The women were all too sensual, too erotic for a lot of public taste. They think that he is the person sitting in the grass in the very famous painting by Manet of Déjeuner sur l’herbe. You see this guy who’s a little bit round with a big black beard, and they think that that is actually Courbet, who was very good friends with Manet. So he influenced a lot of [00:34:00] people. He continued to do paintings that both were accepted and then caused controversy, the endless numbers of nudes, all of this.
Commune And Vendome Fallout
Elyse: And then his political ideas caught up to him, and he became involved in the Commune of Paris in 1870. And apparently, I don’t know if there were any specific reasons why, but starting in 1869, he had kind of just became very vocal in his political ideas, very outspoken. He was a Republican with a big R, and he was against any form of monarchy. He wanted to have a kind of proletariat society, and he really, really got into the politics of all of that.
And so he was very, very active in the Commune, and he, along with a whole bunch of other people, not just artists, signed, I don’t know if it was a letter that was published or a petition saying that they wanted to take down the Column of Vendôme.
So I don’t know what form it took that it was public knowledge, but he became the spokesperson for this group. I looked at the photographs online because there are photographs. They did eventually tear [00:35:00] it down, and then, of course, they were forced to have it rebuilt. But what happened was, whether it was just specifically to target him, I really don’t know. It’s hard for me to completely understand all of the politics of that. But in 1871, when this sort of mini war with Prussia was over, people from the Commune were condemned. A lot of them were sent to prison and things like that. He was brought to trial, and he was accused personally, just him, of being the one who destroyed the Vendôme Column.
Annie: I doubt he could do that.
It’s kind of high.
Elyse: It’s kind of high.
Annie: And there was a massive statue on top. No, one guy couldn’t do it, no.
Elyse: But they really targeted him, and the court sentenced him to personally, individually paying back all the money that would be required to rebuild and put back up the Vendôme Column.
Annie: With the statue of Napoleon on top?
Elyse: With a statue of Napoleon on top.
Now, the sum they give is the sum of what the money was at the time. I don’t know how much that would be, [00:36:00] probably millions today. But so basically what happened was he said, number one, that he didn’t accept the fact that he was considered to be responsible for it. Number two, there was no way he was going to pay it back because he didn’t have that kind of money, and so he exiled himself to Switzerland.
Annie: Oh, okay.
Close to home.
Elyse: Close to home. Yeah. Actually very close to home.
Exile Loss And Legacy
Elyse: But it is kind of sad because he did spend the last seven years of his life, in fact, exiled in Switzerland. And he came back to Paris a few times. Exile was kind of not quite the same it is today. I mean, you could enter the country and then leave again, you know, that kind of thing. But basically, it was to avoid dealing with this punishment that had to do with the Commune of Paris. He continued to paint. Of course, he was still by this time really famous and selling in almost all the northern countries, in England, in the United States. His paintings, besides The Funeral he did two or three other of these massive sized paintings that were really considered to be masterpieces by this time. Everywhere, [00:37:00] except of course, in France. And then in 1872, his son, who was 25, died.
Annie: Oh, that’s sad.
Elyse: And even though he had never recognized him, apparently he was really quite attached to him, and so that was really a blow to him. And his health was failing. He had spent years obviously abusing things. I mean, he had gotten very heavy. He was apparently drinking a lot. In spite of his, what seems to be a kind of strong personality, he clearly internally, probably had a hard time with so much of the criticism,that was leveled against him. And so in spite of everything, he didn’t do that much of a production starting in 1871, and he died in Switzerland in 1877, was quietly buried in the little village where he was, and not brought back to France until 1919 by his younger sister Juliette. So it’s really quite remarkable because what happened was he influenced Manet, he influenced Monet, [00:38:00] he influenced all the impressionists, he influenced the post-impressionists, not just in his style, but in his thinking about art.
And he wrote things. I just want to read a couple because I just find them so interesting. He said, “I’ve had so many insults about my work, but I don’t care because if I weren’t insulted or criticized anymore, I wouldn’t be important.”
And another, he says, “In the past when I painted in a way they were comfortable,” meaning the academy was comfortable with, “they accepted my work. Now that I have my own style, there is no hope for them accepting me.” It’s really interesting. He wrote and wrote and wrote. He wrote about what he thought art should be. He wrote about what he thought should happen to his work. And of course, as soon as he died, people started citing him. Monet and all those people would say, “We were influenced by Courbet. We were influenced by his work, by his ideas about art, about his freedom.” He said artists have to be free.
Basically, I think that [00:39:00] we’d say this is the leitmotif of his life, was that you do what you want to do, and nobody should be able to tell you that this is not good, whatever it is. And then we have, of course, the fact that he left over 1,000 paintings.
Major Works And Scandals
Elyse: And let’s talk about just a couple of them.
Annie: Yes, yes, yes. There are some that are a bit striking.
Elyse: Striking, right. So we know about The Funeral at Ornans. There’s another one that he did called the Apres Dinner a Ornans, which is a group of workers. It makes me think of a lot of Van Gogh’s work, you know, where you see people, these men sitting around with pipes in their mouths after dinner. Again, it’s a huge format that was criticized because you don’t do a painting about little nobodies on this big scale. The painting that publicly was well known, that was the most scandalous, was he did a painting of drunken priests coming back. It’s called In the Evening Coming Back from a Conference, and that painting probably was considered to be the most outrageous of them all, and his attitude towards [00:40:00] the church was very clear.
Annie: I have hung out with a drunken priest, and that day I drank nothing. So it was interesting.
Elyse: It was interesting.
Annie: It was at my brother’s wedding.
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Elyse:
Origin Of The World Story
Elyse: But of course, the painting that has these days created the biggest scandal, and is available to be seen at the Orsay Museum, is a very small painting. It’s actually really, really pretty small, called The Origin of the World.
And it is a painting of a woman’s sex, basically. It is a painting that is taken from a point of view that is incredibly strange because it’s the camera… And he did use a camera, by the way, to actually prepare the painting. He took photographs. But it’s eye level with her sex, and you see her legs spread out, and you see the sex, and you see a little bit of her torso, and that’s all you see.
Annie: It’s the gynecologist’s viewpoint.
Elyse: That’s very good. Yes, that’s exactly what it is. It’s the gynecologist’s point of view. And it turns out that the painting was a private [00:41:00] commission, made for… we know who it is. His name was something Bey, B-E-Y, because he was an Ottoman, emir. He was a diplomat from Turkey, from the Ottoman Empire, this is the 1830s, 1840s, who was living in Paris, who was rather dissipated, who was a gambler and had a huge collection of mistresses and a collection of erotic art.
And he commissioned Courbet, because Courbet was known for doing these incredible nudes of women that were really incredibly well done and very photographic looking. He commissioned this painting, and it was sold to him, and put in a private spot in his, I suppose, vast apartments in Paris, and was never shown in public until 1995. It passed from one hand to another. They say that what happened was that this emir was a gambler, and eventually had to sell almost everything he owned because he had all these gambling debts. And so part of what he sold was his collection of erotic paintings. So it passed through two or three [00:42:00] other owners, and eventually was given to the Orsay Museum in the middle of the 20th century, and then I have no idea if there was a question or not about whether to show it, but it is of course on display in the Orsay Museum.
And it is true that it is rather startling, because it’s in the same room as the Funeral at Ornans, which is this very staid, huge painting in lots of blacks, of the priests on one side, the family on the other side, they’re all mourning at this cemetery, and they’re, basically across the space. You know, you have two or three of the portraits, and then you have this. It’s strange, you know? It is strange to see.
Museum Encounter Reactions
Annie: So, so if I may tell you how I came upon painting, in Ornans, because it is in Ornans. Not the original, it’s a copy. So when you go to the museum, you will see a lot of bucolic, beautiful scenes, portraits, like dozens of them. And they are gorgeous, and they are very bucolic and lovely. And then you turn into a new room, and there’s a [00:43:00] sculpture. I hadn’t looked at the sculpture up close, but later I realized it was pretty much The Origin of Man, but in sculpture form.
Elyse: The Origin of the World.
Annie: Of the world, sorry. The Origin of the World. So it was pretty much The Origin of the World in sculpture form, but not full size. Anyway, I didn’t pay attention to the sculpture. And then you turn around, and in a small room… it’s a small room, like it’s not big, you know? And you have vagina. A giant foufoune, as we would say in French. Staring at you. Because it’s not a big paintingbut in terms of vaginas, you know, it’s big.
Elyse: I think in centimeters, it’s 35 by 50 or something. It’s really small.
Annie: But it’s bigger than anything natural. Not that I’m a specialist in these things. But yeah, it’s a bit startling. And the way they display it in the Ornans Museum is it’s around a box. So they show you the thing that whoever owned the [00:44:00] painting could cover it and just slide the front open. So the frame was interesting as well, because it was put in a frame where you could cover it with a piece of wood. It’s really interesting. I mean, the room was small enough that once I had taken a couple of photos of the room, whatever, I just stood there, and I wanted to see people’s reaction to the thing. And you can see, there’s just an instant of, ” Oh!” and then they’re, ” Okay, be calm about this.” Like, this is normal. But people kind of, they all have a quick reaction to it.
Elyse: Oh, I think so. I mean, I can’t remember now the first time I saw it, but I’m sure. I mean, I don’t think it’s possible to see it for the first time and not have some kind of reaction to it.
Annie: But the thing is, it’s very sexual obviously, but it’s not erotic.
Elyse: No, it’s clinical.
I mean, it’s really anatomically clinical. And I was reading an article yesterday about it, and they say that, they think he took lots of… There was a model, he did [00:45:00] some sketching. They think they even know who it actually was. But then he-
Annie: Whoever had to pose for that, it would not have been fun.
Elyse: But that’s why they know that he did a whole series of photographs. And he worked from photograph. He really did. I mean, he actually worked from photograph for even some of the nudes that are full bodypaintings. He used it as a tool. It was a very practical tool. You couldn’t sit that long in a position like that anyway, no.
Annie: I don’t know if there’s lots of guys listening to this, but most women don’t enjoy being spread eagle that long, you know?
Elyse: It’s in the sense that it’s a painting where you can see the tiny details, the brushstroke, unlike some of the other bigger paintings where you have masses of black paint and things like that, or some of his smaller seascapes that are very light and sort of airy and stuff like that.
Realism Freedom And Technique
Elyse: First of all, knowing that it was made specifically for someone who asked him to do this as a painting, that explains one thing. When you do a commission for somebody, you do what they ask you to do,whatever style that is.
Annie: Of course, yeah.
Elyse: [00:46:00] But at the same time, this is his notion of reality, you know? And it’s like this is in your face reality, you know?
Annie: It is definitely in your face reality, yes. Yes, definitely.
Elyse: And basically, his heritage is that. His heritage is basically that an artist should do what he wants to do. For him, reality, realism, he’s quoted as saying, when they started criticizing his work in the late 1840s, “I’m going to shove reality down their faces.” I mean, he had a real attitude, this guy.
Annie: Yep. Done.
Elyse: You know?
Annie: Done.
Elyse: Done, done. And he did, basically, and what he proved, aside from the fact that he had remarkable painting technique, this is a self-taught guy. I mean, he never took painting classes in his life.
Annie: That is crazy.
Elyse: He used palette, he used brush, he did all these techniques of laying one color on top of the other. He experimented with black. He experimented with the light colors for the seascapes. He was basically all [00:47:00] over the place. I mean, just how prolific can you be? His career was not that long. So we have Courbet to thank for the freedom that happened afterwards, specifically in French art.
Annie: That’s cool. All right.
Visiting Ornans And Beyond
Annie: We’ve been talking a long time, but briefly I want to talk about what there is to see in this area.
Elyse: Yeah. Particularly Ornans.
Annie: Yeah, particularly Ornans. So what you can do is, definitely, if you are short on time, just go to the Musee Courbet, which is a very well done museum. There’s a lot to see. I would say two hours is minimum, perhaps three would be better. It’s right along the river, and you will see nice views of the colorful houses that are along the river. It’s very nice.
You also have Courbet’s studio, which is very close to where the museum is, where you might spend 30 to 45 minutes. It’s worth it. I didn’t, but it’s worth it. And then you can drive to the Ferme Familiale Courbet. It’s in Flagey. It’s a [00:48:00] short drive to it, but that would take about 45 to 60 minutes. Andit’s a drive through the Loue Valley, which is this beautiful river.
Elyse: Beautiful.
Annie: Beautiful river. And you will see many of the landscapes that he painted because this was his father’s farm. His father was a successful landowner, and farmer, and wine maker, and things like that. So just taking the drive or the bike ride would be really interested.
Hikes Views And Via Francigena
Annie: And in this area, if you look at maps, you will see a lot of things called belvedere, which means viewpoint. And a lot of them are places that you can either, well, all of them, I’m sure, you can either hike to the belvedere or you could drive. Usually there’s a few parking spots nearby anyway. There’s one called Belvedere du Grand Meandre de la Loue, and you can hike through, Chenecey-Buillon, through the forest and all that. If you look at [00:49:00] Decathlon Outdoor, so that’s a website, it’s also an app, and you look for Ornans, it will show you a bunch of bikes, bike rides, hikes you can do, lots and lots. And anytime you look for belvedere around me, you will see the beautiful viewpoints.
Of course, there’s also Besançon in this area. Like we mentioned at the beginning, it’s about 120,000 people. It’s a city. It looked absolutely splendid from the road.
Elyse: It’s fortified, I believe.
Annie: Yes. So the fortification is actually a UNESCO World Heritage site, because it’s gorgeous. Also, Ornans is a two and a half drive to Bern, Switzerland. Dijon is an hour and a half. Besançon, it’s maybe a half an hour. You know, like I mentioned, the closest town to Switzerland is only 65 kilometers away, but mostly all around Ornans you have D roads and N roads, so nationale departementale, small roads where you can’t drive very fast.
Elyse: Makes it prettier.
Annie: Makes it very pretty. And the Via Francigena through [00:50:00] there, and we had an episode about that not so long ago. It’s the route that goes from Canterbury to Rome. It passes directly through Ornans. Like from Besançon, you’re heading south and east a little bit towards Italy. And so from Besançon to Pontarlier, both are in the Doubs Department, and then you move on to Switzerland. So the, the walk between Besançon and Ornans is about 27 kilometers, so that’s a good long, daily hike.
Elyse: Daily, yeah.
Annie: I mean, when they do this pilgrimage, they do it in a day typically. And then you could walk also between Ornans and Pontarlier, but that’s almost 50 kilometers. And it’s gorgeous, gorgeous. It follows the Loue River through really picturesque villages such as Lods and Moutier-Haut-Pierre, and then you’re going uphill towards Switzerland. I mean, difficult hikes. There’s places where there’s very difficult kind of mountain climbing, facades that are famous, you know. So it’s an area where you know, sporty [00:51:00] people would really, really enjoy that. I mean, to me, it looks splendid.
Elyse: He painted the valley of the Loue endless times.
Annie: And you know, there’s an area called La Source de la Loue. It kind of looks like Fontaine de Vaucluse, where you see the kind of the rocky origin of the river, except it doesn’t have all the tourists and the tourist shops. You know, it’s like natural. It’s a little hike, a 40-minute hike apparently that you can do. There’s some ancient chateaus in the area. There’s a few things, but it’s really mostly about people who want to enjoy nature, hiking, biking. So Decathlon Outdoor is your friend. You can look for different things, different levels of difficulty. There’s things you can do with children, without children, et cetera.
And of course, the Ferme Familiale de Courbet is absolutely gorgeous apparently. The garden is wonderful. It’s about 15 miles south of Ornans. And it’s a free thing to visit. And you can see the farmhouse, the old [00:52:00] barn, the temporary exhibition, so it’s one of these places that has temporary artists in residence. It has artists in residence as well there, there’s a cafe called, Juliette, named after his sister. They do concerts, they do lectures, they do workshops. I mean, it’s turned into a big…
Elyse: An art center.
Annie: … cultural art center nowadays. And of course, there’s much more to see in the Doubs Department, but we’ll do a full episode about the Doubs at some point.
Wrap Up And Farewell
Annie: Voilà, beautiful place. Too bad I was in a hurry. I would love to go back. Honestly, this is a part of France that is so bucolic. I am not surprised that he was inspired by the views of the river, the villages, all of it and utterly not touristy. If you’re sick and tired of tourists, go there. I mean, there were a few French people, there were a few Swiss people, there were a few German people, but just a few. It’s striking. I’m telling you, it looks very much like Fontaine de Vaucluse, except remove all the tourists, remove all the trinkets. No plastic [00:53:00] crap, you know. No, nature. Awesome. Awesome. Absolutely awesome. Thank you so much, Elyse.
Elyse: You are welcome, Annie.
Annie: Merci beaucoup. Au revoir.
Thank you Patrons
Annie: Again, I want to thank my patrons for giving back and supporting the show. Patrons get several exclusive rewards for doing that. You can see them at patreon.com/joinus. And a special shout-out this week to my new Join Us in France champions, Sandy Copping, Kathryn Gearhead, Laura Knott, Pete Langlois, Mary Pilch, and Tracy Gillespie.
Would you join them, too? It’s really the best thing you can do to help these episodes coming. And to support Elyse, go to patreon.com/elysart.
If you’re planning a trip to France and want expert help, I do itinerary [00:54:00] consults, whether you have a rough plan that you want to refine, or you’re starting from scratch and are feeling a bit overwhelmed.
There are a lot of decisions to be made. I can also lead custom day trips around the southwest in my electric car, and I have these eight self-guided tours of Paris on the VoiceMap app. Podcast listeners get a discount on the tours when you buy directly from my website, which also means that more of your money reaches me instead of going to Apple or Google.
And everything is at joinusinfrance.com/boutique.
Bootcamp 2026
Annie: Let’s talk about Bootcamp 2026, which ended last Saturday, and I want to tell you how it went while it’s still fresh. In short, it went really well. We had a few tiny misadventures, the kind you get whenever a group of people travels together for a week.
One very nice gentleman left his phone on the bus. I made sure the driver put it somewhere safe, and he had it back the next day. Another participant was running late for the bus one morning, but we all stayed in touch on WhatsApp, [00:55:00] so we knew she was on her way and nobody worried at all. That was it. That was the drama.
As a group, people worked together beautifully, and we had a grand time. I want to say a word about what the Join Us in France Bootcamp really is, because it’s not a regular tour. It’s where you come to meet other Francophiles and make friends. That’s the heart of it.
And then, as we say in French, la cerise sur le gâteau, the cherry on the cake, you also get to visit some wonderful places and meet Elyse and I in person. This year we went to Albi, Carcassonne, and Foix. We learned about the Canal du Midi and the man who made it happen, Pierre-Paul Riquet. And bootcampers stayed in Toulouse, which is the fastest-growing of France’s big cities, and is still a very livable place.
We also had a wine, cheese, and charcuterie tasting with some of the nicest winemakers in the Gaillac area. This was a highlight for a lot of people, and not only because of the wine. I just made a reminder for myself that I need to have [00:56:00] Anita and Anthony on the podcast to talk about Gaillac wines, because they are wonderful.
What struck me again this year is who comes. Most of the people who sign up for bootcamp are not group tour people. For many of them, this was their first time they’d ever traveled with a group. They came because they wanted to have a unique sort of vacation, and I can’t tell you what a pleasure it is to finally meet you in real life after you’ve been listening for years.
Every one of the bootcampers was interesting. They bring their life experience, their stories, their questions, and they all enjoy France so much. Side conversations I had with them were some of the best parts of the week for me. We also had a few spouses who came along without really knowing much about the podcast, and let’s be honest, they just came to make their spouse happy, and they ended up loving it, too.
That always makes me happy. Everybody was generous and gracious with me, with Elyse, and with each other. I feel very privileged that I get to put together an event like this, and that it [00:57:00] all grew out of this little podcast of mine. Thank you to everyone who came. You made it what it was.
Now, about the future, I’m not sure yet how future Join Us in France events will be organized. Elyse has told me she doesn’t feel like she can do the whole week of Bootcamp anymore, and I completely understand that, but I plan to keep doing a yearly event of some kind, and I hope Elyse will be able to join us for part of it.
There will also be a full episode about the Bootcamp 2026 with some of the attendees, and we’ll talk more about the places we visited and what we did. You’ll hear it from the horse’s mouth, as it were. I’m going to release that the day I’m ready to announce the event for 2027, so you’ll hear about both at the same time.
I don’t have the details worked out yet. When I do, you’ll be the first to know. I’m opening a waiting list, however. Let me know if you want to hear about it. It’s annie@joinusinfrance.com.
Newsletter
Annie: One [00:58:00] more thing before I let you go. If you like the podcast, the newsletter is worth your inbox. It’s short, it comes out around each episode, and it’s the place I actually talk about what’s going on behind the scenes, not just the show notes.
You can sign up at joinusinfrance.com/newsletter.
My thanks to podcast editor Anne and Christian Cotovan.
Next week on the podcast
Annie: Next week on the podcast, it’ll be an episode about strategies to visit the northwest of France with Jennifer Hanneman. She loves the area. She lives nearby, so she has gotten to know it very well.
Thank you so much for listening, and I hope you join me next time so we can look around France together. Au revoir.
Copyright
Annie Sargent: The join us in France Travel Podcast is written, hosted, and produced by Annie Sargent and copyright 2026 by Addicted to France. It is released under a Creative Comments, attribution, non-commercial, no derivatives license.[00:59:00] [01:00:00]