Gustave Courbet

Le musée de l'Abbaye présente un bel ensemble d'oeuvres de Gustave Courbet provenant principalement des collections de l'institut Gustave Courbet, mais également d'autres collections publiques de la Région et notamment du musée Courbet d'Ornans, du musée municipal de Pontarlier, de la Grande Saline de Salin-les-Bains, du musée des beaux-arts de Dole et du musée des beaux-arts de Lons-le-Saunier.
La thématique du paysage est abordée de manière transversale en mettant en avant d'autres artistes du XIXe siècle, collaborateurs ou amis de Courbet, qui ont intégrés pleinement la nature et le paysage au coeur de leurs démarches. L'exposition révèle l'implication du sanclaudien George Besson, lequel oeuvra pour l'acquisition de la maison natale de Courbet, puis celle de Guy Bardone, donateur de la collection constitutive du musée de l'Abbaye qui fut ensuite secrétaire général de l'institut Courbet pendant près de 15 ans.

Courbet claimed that he belonged to no school, portraying himself as a free, independent artist and pursuing his career with the stated aim of paving the way for his own particular manner of “painting the real.” This school of nature took root already in his early youth, when he was first introduced to “plein-air” drawing and painting “from life.”
This book examines the Naturalism in Courbet’s oeuvre, mainly through his landscapes, and the influence he may have had on later artists who formed a Franche-Comté school of landscape. The figure of George Besson (Saint-Claude, 1882 – Paris, 1971), an art collector and critic, and ardent defender of Courbet and Realism, is seen through the lens of the history of the creation of the Musée Courbet in Ornans, and also through Besson’s connection to his birthplace, Saint-Claude, where – some forty years after he had laid the groundwork for it – the inauguration of the Musée de l’Abbaye was made possible with the backing of two donors and painters: Guy Bardone and René Genis.
A number of Franche-Comté personalities thus orbit around Courbet, all of whom have contributed, in their various capacities, to the awareness, dissemination and continued influence of Courbet’s work and of art.

Saint-Claude, Musée de l'Abbaye, January - April 2021

Contents

The School of Nature
Valérie Pugin

Courbet’s Landscapes, an Intimate View, a Universal Vision
Dominique de Font-Réaulx

Courbet’s La Roche pourrie, Souvenir and Memento Mori
Petra ten-Doesschate Chu

When George Besson Campaigned in Favour of Courbet and Realism...
Chantal Duverget

For a Courbet Museum in Ornans. The Art Critic and Collector George Besson and the “Amis de Gustave Courbet”
Carine Joly

SECTIONS

1. The School of Nature
2. Waterfalls, Sources, Sea
3. Minerality, Painting Limestone
4. Animal Representations
5. Portraits
6. Followers, Painter Friends and Collaborators
7. Gustave Courbet’s Biography
8. Reproductive Engravings. Popular Images Published of Courbet's Masterpieces

Biographies of the main artists cited
Select bibliography