Letters of Gustave Courbet
Category: Books,Biographies & Memoirs,Historical
Letters of Gustave Courbet Details
From Publishers Weekly Containing all of Gustave Courbet's (1819-1877) known letters--more than 600--this massive volume explodes the notion of the artist as a naive provincial, an image he himself constructed and carefully nurtured. Full of pithy remarks, colorful descriptions and cultural allusions, the correspondence reveals the French realist painter as an ambitious self-promoter who craved material success and was keenly aware of the artist's precarious status in a market-driven economy. Among Courbet's correspondents were Baudelaire, Monet, Hugo and anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon. Reflecting his development from spoiled teenager to symbol of political resistance, these energetic, offhand letters express Courbet's defiance of authority in all forms, his hatred of imperialism, his tweaking of the art establishment, participation in the Paris Commune, tragic decline and his death in exile in Switzerland. Chu, an art history professor at Seton Hall University in New Jersey, accompanies the letters with 40 halftones. Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. Read more Language Notes Text: English (translation) Original Language: French Read more From the Back Cover The French Realist painter Gustave Courbet (1819-77), a pivotal figure in the emergence of modern painting, remains an artist whose interests, attitudes, and friendships are little understood. A voluminous correspondent, Courbet himself, through his letters, offers a tantalizing avenue toward a keener assessment of his character and accomplishments. In her critical edition of over six hundred of the artist's letters, Petra ten-Doesschate Chu presents just such a look at the inner life of the artist; her unparalleled feat of gathering together all of Courbet's known letters, many heretofore unpublished and untranslated, is sure to change our evaluation of Courbet's creativity and of his place in nineteenth-century French life. Beginning when Courbet left his provincial home at eighteen and ending eight days before his death in exile in Switzerland, this correspondence enables readers to follow the artist's development from youth to mature artist of international repute. Addressed to such varied and key figures of the Second Empire and the early Third Republic as Charles Baudelaire, Alfred Bruyas, Max Buchon, Champfleury, Pierre Dupont, Theophile Gautier, Victor Hugo, Claude Monet, the Comte de Nieuwerkerke, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Jules Simon, Jules Valles, and Francis Wey, Courbet's letters offer numerous insights into the artist's private and public personae, his work, and his participation in the cultural and political life of his day. They will encourage a rethinking of fixed notions about Courbet while they help to form a more nuanced picture of the artist's marketing strategies, his relation to the contemporary media, his deliberate choice of subject matter for Salon paintings, hispreoccupation with photography, and his reasons for participating in the Commune. The correspondence is also important for a better understanding of Courbet's work. The letters reveal that the artist produced an uninterrupted flow of portraits of family and friends, work unaccounted for today that appears to be as crucial to the development of Courbet's art as his larger, better-known paintings. Petra ten-Doesschate Chu, a recognized expert on nineteenth-century French art, has spent over ten years collecting, translating, and annotating these letters. Along with her annotations, she has provided this edition with an introduction, a detailed chronology, short biographies of Courbet's correspondents and persons appearing frequently in the letters, a list of paintings and sculptures mentioned in the letters, and an inventory of the letters and their whereabouts. The result is an invaluable cultural resource, as useful as it is readable, as illuminating as it is entertaining. Read more
Reviews
This compendium of letters by Courbet, translated from the French, offers a firsthand insight into his personal and professional life from when he was a young man, writing letters to his parents, throughout his long career, when he was corresponding with art dealers, friends, family, and so on. Many of these letters are previously unpublished, so this tome is a very thorough biography as told through letters. A must-have resource for scholars looking for primary source material.
