Gustave Courbet. Georges Riat

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      Courtois, in the Corsaire of the 14th of January 1851, was also of the opinion that this painting showed a true predilection for ugliness; “a disgusting canvas represents a burial at l’Ornus… It makes you recoil at the idea of being buried at l’Ornus! And I couldn’t say if it would be much better to be born there amidst such ugly people.” Some compare Courbet to the Flemish painters, though they would never have painted life-sized characters in such a scene.

      “Never before perhaps,” exclaimed J. Delécluze, “has ugliness been glorified more blatantly than this time by Monsieur Courbet. The scene suggests a daguerreotype that didn’t turn out; the beadles are base caricatures, both disgusting and laughable. Realism is a brutal system of painting which defiles and degrades art, and, in spite of the very real qualities of its advocate, he puts himself forward in this way with an almost cynical boldness.”

      P. Hussard, in the National complained that his eye and his mind had suffered “the searing pains of ugliness… and the abysmal revulsion of baseness.” It was also the opinion of Peisse at the Constitutionnel; “He confuses truth with reality; he brings observation down to the level of a descriptive inventory. It is brutal, rather than intellectual; his analysis is not carried through with that life-giving synthesis. Nothing is less true that the real; the closer one gets to the one, the farther from the other; truth is what is permanent about things, and characteristic of their nature; reality, on the other, is merely the product of accidental details. The permanent is the ideal for which to strive; the role of art is to make the ideal real.” Théophile Gautier; “We don’t know whether we should cry or laugh. Did the author intend to make a caricature or a serious painting?” The women’s portraits would tend to point towards the serious side, “but the two beadles, with their faces blotched with vermillion, their drunken appearance, their red robes and their ribbed caps, look doltish enough to make Daumier jealous. The Charivari offers its subscribers no satires more bizarre than this… There are also heads which are reminiscent of signs from tobacco stores and menageries with their Caribbean outlandishness of their shape and colour.” In addition, many serious mistakes of composition were pointed out, including the horizontal arrangement of the characters and the absence of depth and perspective. The characters themselves are silhouettes without shading or body, simply filled with a high degree of local colour, which is, in fact, subtle and accurate, and immensely effective. This shower of favourable and unfavourable criticism, spread across newspapers of so widely differing opinions, demonstrates just how original Courbet’s art was, since it was disconcerting to such an extent. It must be noted that Man with a Pipe escaped the general disapproval which attached itself not only to A Burial at Ornans, The Stone Breakers and Return from the Fair, but even the portraits of Berlioz, Journet and of Wey, with the landscapes slipping by unnoticed in the tumult.

      For Peisse, this portrait is “an admirable bit of painting” and according to Vignon, “a gem of shaping, delicacy, and execution”. The “head rendered with a rare talent, ‘smoothness’ and a freedom in the brushwork which are quite remarkable, and which serve to prove that the author has studied the Carracci and the Spanish School,” thought Delécluze…

      And yet, a few critics were more insightful. For one admirer, The Stone Breakers, Return from the Fair and A Burial at Ornans were “triumphs of truth”. Albert de la Fizelière concluded that the scene of the A Burial at Ornans has a quiet drama and a definite effect. P. Pétroz, in the Vote Universel, applauded the artist for giving the painting of contemporary life the same elevation as historical painting, and for opening up a new avenue for art. And, as was to be expected, Champfleury vigorously championed his friend.