Gustave Courtbet’s Young Ladies on the Banks of the Seine, c. 1857

Camryn Perry

Nothing could have prepared me for the whirlwind of emotions that I would experience while on my way to see, in person, Gustave Courbet’s infamous and highly sexually-charged painting entitled Young Ladies on the Banks of the Seine, c. 1857, located in the Petit Palais in Paris, France. When our class arrived at the museum entrance, we were informed that the Petit Palais had been closed for the day due to the numerous amount of Parisian transportation workers exercising their very important (yet slightly inconvenient) right to go on strike. I felt my heart sink into my stomach, and, not to be totally dramatic, but the bad news hit me so hard that I felt temporarily disoriented. I bit back tears, willing myself not to act like a total fool in front of my classmates.

Thankfully, our luck seemed to turn around by the next day, as the Petit Palais was opened once again, and we managed to arrive there fairly early.  We made our way into the museum, and, with only a miniscule amount of struggle, we found the painting. Despite having seen several of Courbet’s enormous paintings just the day before at the Musée d’Orsay, there was still nothing that could have prepared me for how I would feel the moment I laid eyes on it.

Gustave Courbet, Young Ladies on the Banks of the Seine, 1857. Oil on canvas. Paris, Petit Palais. March 23, 2018: I am shown encountering the work of art for the very first time in this image. (Photo: Hayla May)

There I stood before this rather large canvas depicting the two Parisian women that I had studied so closely, the half-lidded gaze of the woman in the foreground fervently and unapologetically making contact with my own. Even with knowing what I knew about the painting from my research, I was still not ready for how vividly this work would seem to transform me, the viewer, into a voyeur.

Gustave Courbet, Detail of the face of the foremost figure from Young Ladies on the Banks of the Seine, 1857. Oil on canvas. Paris, Petit Palais. (Photo: Camryn Perry)

Before seeing this work of art in person, I strongly believed that it would have been difficult for a modern viewer to understand why it caused such a scandal when Courbet exhibited it in the Salon of 1857. After all, it was an absolutely gorgeous painting, and perhaps, on the surface level, it might have seemed conservative, agreeable, and cheerful. However, when the seductive, glazed-over expression of the foremost woman met my eyes, the controversial and erotic nature of the painting became immediately apparent. The languid poses of the figures and their impossible-to-ignore facial expressions combined with the relatively large scale of the painting left me feeling shocked and almost completely floored, and it gave me an incredible urge to go on a feminist rant that would have made Linda Nochlin proud.

It wasn’t at all that I didn’t like the painting; quite the contrary, I absolutely adored this painting! Courbet’s work is breathtakingly beautiful, and he was, without a shadow of a doubt, an incredible painter. In person, his rough, yet elegant brushstrokes were even more apparent, and one could easily see the way in which Courbet rejected the highly polished and refined style that was popular among French painters in the mid 19^th-century. It was so obvious to me that Courbet did not attempt to artificially create a focal point for this painting; rather, he treated each aspect of the painting with equal amounts of care, from the faces of the figures, to the immense detail of the foliage in the background. In fact, there truly was no structured composition within this painting, at all, as the two lounging women seemed to form an organic mass that almost melted, visually, into the background.

Gustave Courbet, Young Ladies on the Banks of the Seine, 1857. Oil on canvas. Paris, Petit Palais. (Photo: Camryn Perry)

In addition, he did not take advantage of aerial perspective when it came to the diminishment of detail as objects move back in space, and he did not, in particular, selectively choose elements to emphasize to form a focal point. Take, for example, the detail of the gloved hand of the woman in the foreground that I have shown pictured below. This thin, yellow veil of a glove was barely noticeable from photographs. However, in person, one could easily see the subtle, yet intricate amounts of detail that Courbet poured into every inch of the canvas, which would not have existed if it weren’t for his rejection of these compositional conventions.

Gustave Courbet, Detail of the hand of the foremost figure from Young Ladies on the Banks of the Seine, 1857. Oil on canvas. Paris, Petit Palais. (Photo: Camryn Perry)

However, this did not mean that Courbet was unaware of these basic artistic conventions; rather, Courbet, as a realist painter, rejected these ideas quite purposefully, which, ultimately, led to his paintings feeling much more “real.” After seeing this painting in person, I can say with complete confidence that Courbet was not interested in artificially guiding the viewer’s eyes around the canvas, nor painting traditional figures in what was considered the acceptable dress and pose of the time. It was quite the contrary, actually. Courbet not only wanted to paint reality, but all of the grittiness that came with it.

Gustave Courbet, Young Ladies on the Banks of the Seine, 1857. Oil on canvas. Paris, Petit Palais. I am shown standing next to the painting following my presentation for scale. (Photo: Hayla May)

Sources Consulted

Faunce, Sarah and Linda Nochlin. Courbet Reconsidered. New York, 1988

Fried, Michael. Courbet’s Realism. Chicago and London, 1990

Galitz, Kathryn Calley. “Gustave Courbet (1819-1877).” Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/gust/hd_gust.htm

Goldman, Bernard. “Realist Iconography: Intent and Criticism.” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism. Vol. 18/2 (1959) : 183-192

Lévy, Pierre Oscar. “Demoiselles des bords de Seine (Courbet) par Pierre Oscar Lévy.” YouTube video, 7:54, 2013, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yoqs-gammvs

n.a., Petit Palais. Brief Online Catalogue Entry for Gustave Courbet, Young Ladies on the Banks of the Seine (Summer), 1857. http://www.petitpalais.paris.fr/en/oeuvre/young-ladies-banks-seine-summer

n.a., The National Gallery. Overview for Gustave Courbet, Young Ladies on the Bank of the Seine, before 1857. https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/gustave-courbet-young-ladies-on-the-bank-of-the-seine

Nochlin, Linda. Courbet. New York, 2007

____________. Women, Art, and Power and other essays. New York, 1988