A Burial at Ornans

1849–50

Oil on canvas, 315 × 668 cm. Musée d'Orsay, Paris

A village funeral, with Courbet's family and neighbors as the mourners, on a canvas almost seven meters long.

Shown at the same Salon as The Stonebreakers; critics called it vulgar and ugly.
The Musée d'Orsay points to the visible brushwork and deep blacks, applied with brush and palette knife, against academic polish.
Who is being buried is unknown.
Ordinary villagers painted life-size, a scale normally given to religious and mythic subjects, made it the manifesto of the new style.

Themes

Image: Wikimedia Commons · Public domain