The people of Ornans, a small town in eastern France, gather in the cemetery to bury an unnamed villager. Courbet painted an ordinary provincial funeral on the colossal scale of history painting, with nearly fifty life-size figures who were all townspeople. The painting is regarded as the manifesto of Realism.
Key facts
- Artist
- Gustave Courbet1819–1877 · French
- Date
- 1849–50
- Period
- Realism1840–1880
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Dimensions
- 315 × 668 cm
- Location
- Musée d'Orsay Paris, France
Actual size
Compared with an adult 170 cm tall
Palette
#131112#5C5746#857B61#3D382E#26221EBackground
Ornans was Courbet's home town. The funeral is generally thought to be that of his great-uncle, held in the town's new cemetery opened in 1848. Courbet had the mayor, the priest, relatives and neighbours pose for him one by one; his father and sisters are among them.
In the academic hierarchy, only mythological, religious and historical subjects deserved such a vast canvas. By using it for ordinary villagers, Courbet declared that the lives of contemporary common people were as worthy of commemoration as ancient heroes.
At the Salon of 1850–51 critics condemned the figures as ugly, the composition as chaotic and the subject as vulgar. Courbet retorted that A Burial at Ornans was in fact the burial of Romanticism.
Technique & composition
The figures are strung out horizontally like a long frieze, without a traditional focal point and without heroes or saints. Each has an individual expression, grieving, distracted or impatient, as at a real funeral.
Black dominates, the mourners' clothes merging into a single mass, relieved by the white and red of and . Behind rise the pale limestone near Ornans, adding to the solemn mood under a leaden sky.
Details
Symbolism
The anonymous dead
We never see the dead person; the coffin is covered, and the foreground is taken up by . Courbet's subject is not one individual's death but how a whole community faces death.
Religion and the everyday
is raised high and the priest reads the office, but the red-robed beadles are ruddy-faced and vacant, and others seem preoccupied. Some critics saw a jibe at the emptiness of religious ritual.
Stories
- Did you know?
The canvas was so large that it barely fitted in Courbet's studio; he could not step back to see it whole and had to paint it in sections.
- Did you know?
When the 1855 Paris World's Fair refused this painting and another of his large works, Courbet built his own “Pavilion of Realism” next door, one of the first solo exhibitions in art history.
Legacy
A Burial at Ornans broke the hierarchy of subjects and paved the way for Manet and the Impressionists to paint modern life. The term “Realism” itself became widely known through Courbet.
