Photography Credits

Art Resource, New York/Réunion des Musées Nationaux, Paris, figs. 8, 12, 13 (photo Hervé Lewandowski), 14 (photo Thierry Le Mage), 19, 20 (photo Arnaudet), 23 (photo Thierry Le Mage), 31, 46, 54 (photo Hervé Lewandowski, 59 (photo P. Bernard), 62 (photo Hervé Lewandowski), 71 (photo Harry Bréjat), 76 (photo G. Blot), 81 (photo Hervé Lewandowski), 89 (photo Bulloz), 95, 116, 131 (photo G. Blot/C. Jean)

Art Resource, New York/Scala, Florence, fig. 73

Art Resource, New York/Snark, Besançon, fig. 112

Author photographs, figs. 1, 4, 18, 56, 67, 69, 74, 83, 85, 88, 102

Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Neue Pinakothek, Munich, fig. 132

Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, figs. 45, 48, 49, 50, 51, 57, 63, 72, 84, 87, 88, 117

Bridgeman Art Library International, New York, fig. 10

Charles Deering McCormick Library of Special Collections, Northwestern University, Evanston , Illinois, fig. 50

Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, England, fig. 120

Frits Lugt Collection, Institut Néerlandais, Paris, fig. 37

Galerie Paffrath, Düsseldorf, Germany, fig. 118

Glasgow City Council, (Museums), fig. 106

Harvard College Library, Houghton Library, Department of Printing and Graphic Arts, Cambridge, Massachusetts, fig. 47 (call no. TypDr 815.C301.59a)

Harvard University Art Museums (Fogg Art Museum), Cambridge, Massachusetts, fig. 24 (accession no. 1943. 787; photo Katya Kallsen)

Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts, Stanford, California, fig. 98 (accession no. 1973. 23)

Kunstmuseum, Bern, Switzerland, fig. 100

Musée Antoine Vivenel, Compiègne, France, fig. 33

Musée d’Art Moderne, Troyes, France (photo Daniel Le Nevé), fig. 32

Musée de Picardie, Amiens, France, fig. 123

Musée de Pontarlier, Pontarlier, France, fig. 5

Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lyon, France, fig. 17

Musée des Beaux-Arts, Nîmes, France, fig. 61 (inventory no. IP 0094)

Musée Fabre, Montpellier Agglomération, Montpellier, France (photos Frédéric Jaulmes), figs. 21, 26, 36, 70, 80, 90

Musée Gassendi, Digne-les-Bains, France, fig. 60

Musée Gustave Courbet, Ornans, France, fig. 125

Musée Max Claudet, Salins-les-Bains, France, fig. 111

National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh, fig. 127

National Museum of Art, Architecture, and Design, Oslo, figs. 15 (accession no. NG.M.02169), 16

National Museum of Fine Arts, Stockholm, fig. 11 (accession no. NM 3105)

New York Public Library, Print Collection, New York, fig. 38

Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, fig. 43 (accession no. 1940.11.75)

Photothèque des Musées de la Ville de Paris, Paris, figs. 3, 64

Pierre-Antoine Grisoni, Strates Photographies, Lausanne, Switzerland, fig. 124

Private collection. Courtesy of Wildenstein & Company, New York, fig. 129

Royal Cabinet of Paintings Mauritshuis, The Hague, fig. 6

Schloss Tegel, Berlin, fig. 9

Teylers Museum, Haarlem, Netherlands, fig. 121

Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, Ohio, fig. 109 (accession no. 1950.309)

Trustees of the British Museum, London, fig. 130 Van Gogh Museum Foundation, Amsterdam, fig. 107

Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, Connecticut (purchased through the gift of James Junius Goodwin), fig. 22 Walker Art Gallery, National Museums, Liverpool, fig. 126

Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, Connecticut, fig. 134 (accession no. B1985.36.87)

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BOOKThe Most Arrogant Man in France: Gustave Courbet and the Nineteenth-Century Media Culture

Petra ten-Doesschate Chu

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00284

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-22101

The modern artist strives to be independent of the public’s taste—and yet depends on the public for a living. Petra Chu argues that the French Realist Gustave Courbet (1819–1877) understood this dilemma perhaps better than any painter before him. In The Most Arrogant Man in France, the first comprehensive reinterpretation of Courbet in a generation, Chu tells the fascinating story of how, in the initial age of mass media and popular high art, this important artist managed to achieve an unprecedented measure of artistic and financial independence by promoting his work and himself through the popular press.

The Courbet who emerges in Chu’s account is a sophisticated artist and entrepreneur who understood that the modern artist must sell—and not only make—his art. Responding to this reality, Courbet found new ways to “package,” exhibit, and publicize his work and himself. Chu shows that Courbet was one of the first artists to recognize and take advantage of the publicity potential of newspapers, using them to create acceptance of his work and to spread an image of himself as a radical outsider. Courbet introduced the independent show by displaying his art in popular venues outside the Salon, and he courted new audiences, including women.

And for a time Courbet succeeded, achieving a rare freedom for a nineteenth-century French artist. If his strategy eventually backfired and he was forced into exile, his pioneering vision of the artist’s career in the modern world nevertheless makes him an intriguing forerunner to all later media-savvy artists.

Author

Petra ten-Doesschate Chu

PublisherPrinceton University Press

Print publication date April 2007 (in print)

Print ISBN 9780691126791

EISBN 9780300266528

Illustrations 137

Print Status in print

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