Gustave Courbet 1819–1877
NG 5983 
Still Life with Apples and a Pomegranate

Sarah Herring, 2019

Extracted from:
Sarah Herring, The Nineteenth Century French Paintings (London: National Gallery Company and Yale University Press, 2019).

1871–2

Oil on canvas, 44.6 × 61.2 cm

Signed and dated bottom right in red: G. Courbet⁷¹.

Support

The canvas was wax‐lined in 1969 and the stretcher is new. The original left‐hand tacking edge is intact, and although the bottom, right and top edges have been partially cut, paint is present on the tacking edges of all three. The original canvas was stamped with a French customs stamp, now no longer visible.

Materials and Technique

The finished painting overlies an earlier composition, visible in the X‐radiograph (fig. 1). Central to the original composition is a large, seemingly metallic plate seen from the front and slightly overlapping the top edge. A blue‐grey paint visible under the furthermost apples and the handle of the pewter pot possibly represents its original colour. Some unexplained forms within the underlying plate may be reflections. In the lower right two rounded forms visible in the X‐radiograph and some areas of red paint underlying the present composition could represent fruit from the earlier painting. A knife lying at an angle in the foreground is also present in the X‐radiograph (its handle is particularly prominent), and remains partially visible to the naked eye. There is an unexplained square‐shaped form behind the pewter jug, and a handle which comes out of the present lid but which is unrelated to the present handle.

The canvas has been prepared with a relatively thick layer of warm grey ground composed of a mixture of lead white and ivory black with some yellow earth and vermilion added. The ground also contains large particles of barium sulphate, which was most likely incorporated into the lead white paint as an extender. There appears to be a very thin dark reddish‐brown underlayer, which was painted directly on top of the warm grey ground, possibly a second ground/priming layer. As was typical for Courbet, he probably painted this thin paint layer across the entire picture surface to provide a darker base on which to work up his composition. The dark reddish‐brown colour was created using a mixture of red earth, vermilion and a carbon black pigment, probably charcoal. A similar upper ground can be seen in NG 6396, View of Lac Léman, painted by Courbet in 1874.

The complex paint layer structure found in this painting is consistent with the presence of an underlying composition as seen in the X‐radiograph. The bright opaque orange‐red passages of paint were created using a mixture of vermilion, cadmium yellow, lead white and yellow/red earth pigments as well as a little Indian yellow. In the case of the bright red apple on the table to the left, this opaque orange‐red layer serves as an underlayer to a thick glaze of deep red lake mixed with a little vermilion. The mid yellow‐green of the green apple in the centre of the bowl was painted with what appear to be wet‐in‐wet layers of vibrant mixtures composed principally of cadmium yellow with vermilion and viridian. The yellow highlights of the green apples are composed of the same mixture of pigments, with the addition of lead white to lighten the hue.

A sample from the dark brown background on the left‐hand edge reveals several layers of surprisingly colourful [page 235] [page 236] paint with intermediate varnish layers, possibly relating to changes to the composition as seen in the X‐radiograph. The various layers of paint from greenish‐brown to reddish‐brown contain similar pigments in varying proportions. The pigments identified are vermilion, red earth, red lake, cadmium yellow, ivory black, viridian and French ultramarine. Zinc is present with all passages of cadmium yellow in this painting, presumably corresponding to a particular manufacture of light cadmium yellow which combines a zinc compound with cadmium sulphide.¹ A number of the pigments identified here, notably cadmium yellow, Indian yellow, viridian and French ultramarine, have not been found in other paintings by Courbet in the National Gallery’s collection (with the exception of French ultramarine, which has been found in NG 6396). In general he made use of more established pigments, tending to rely on greens mixed from Prussian blue and chrome yellow rather than such newer greens as viridian. It is perhaps the case that this alteration in palette coincides with his period in prison and the reduced availability of materials. A comparative study of further still lifes painted during and after his imprisonment would shed light on the pigments available to him during this period.²

Analysis of the binding media in two samples identified heat‐bodied linseed oil in a passage of dark brown background paint but a different oil, possibly walnut, in the lighter brown table area.

Conservation and Condition

A report drawn up in 1951 notes that the layers of paint are generally thin except in the light areas, and that there may be a restorer’s retouchings over some of the fruit. Although cleaning tests were made at this time, cleaning was not in the end carried out. The paint appears to be in reasonably good condition under a moderately discoloured varnish.

Discussion

The fruit is piled into a shallow rustic terracotta bowl, which is glazed on the inside in pale blue, the glaze unevenly overlapping the rim. There are 13 visible apples in the dish and one large pomegranate, and two further apples sit on the table to the left, in front of a straight glass of red wine and a lidded pewter jug. The background is a very dark brown, while the table on which the still life stands is a slightly lighter brown. The transition between the darkness of the backdrop and the lighter brown of the table is much more evident on the far left side than on the far right, a result both of the area of red paint under the surface and the shadow thrown by the bowl. Behind and to the right of the pewter vessel is an area of lighter, warmer brown. Both the tankard and the glass are finely painted, Courbet portraying the transparency of the latter and the dull metallic sheen that is peculiar to pewter with the eye of a Dutch seventeenth‐century still‐life painter. By contrast, the apples, a mixture of red and green with a sprinkling of greenish‐yellow and red specimens, are broadly painted; a top layer of bright, saturated paint is laid loosely over underpaint, in some cases overlapping its neighbour or the background. Much of the underpaint shows through (fig. 4). The shadows cast by the apples are rendered in brown, and some, but not all, are spotted in brown, suggesting damage or disease. Despite this, the artist’s aesthetic delight in their rich physicality is evident; above all, they are presented as three‐dimensional, glowing forms.

This painting can be included among those executed by Courbet during his incarceration following his activities during the Paris Commune, the government that ruled Paris from March to the end of May 1871 after France’s defeat in the Franco‐Prussian War. Courbet had always been opposed to the imperial (Napoleon III’s) regime, and in June 1870 he had refused to accept the Légion d’honneur. In September 1870 he was a founding member of the Arts Commission, set up to take charge of the conservation of national monuments. In an address published in the Bulletin official de la municipalité de Paris on 14 September 1870 he proposed the demolition and melting down into coins of the Vendôme Column (erected by Napoleon I to commemorate the battle of Austerlitz), an event that did happen, on 16 May 1871, but not as a direct result of the artist’s address.³ In April 1871 he became President of the newly created Federation of Artists, whose aim was to reform such artistic institutions as the Salon. He was also politically active, becoming a delegate of the sixth arrondissement in the Council of the Commune. He was arrested on 7 June 1871 and prosecuted for ‘participation in a movement designed to change the form of government and to incite the citizens to take up arms against each other; usurpations of civil functions and complicity in the destruction of monuments’.⁴ On 2 September he was sentenced to six months months’ imprisonment and ordered to pay a fine of 500 francs. Initially imprisoned in Sainte‐Pélagie, on 30 December 1871 he was transferred to the clinic of Doctor Duval at Neuilly.⁵

Although at first denied painting materials, Courbet was eventually allowed to paint, although without leaving his cell and without any models.⁶ Instead he was able to explore a subject matter that, apart from a series of flower compositions painted in the Saintonge region in 1862–3 (where he stayed for a number of months at the house of botanist Etienne Baudry (1830–1908)), he had not previously tackled: the fruit and flowers brought in by his sister Zoé, of which he painted a series of still lifes. These paintings were to be greeted with great enthusiasm, for although this exploration of a new genre was dictated by his personal circumstances, in the wider world an increasing recognition of still‐life painting at this period also worked to his advantage, so his output was also a response to orders from patrons and collectors.⁷ He wrote in a letter of 3 March 1872: my paintings are selling marvellously, and I am obliged to take advantage of it in order to make up for my disasters … Here I had the idea of doing some curious paintings of fruit, which are quite successful. My sister bought me some apples, pears, grapes, which served me well at Ste.‐Pélagie. I could not see well, I did very few things, but here it has gone well.⁸ [page 237] The fruit still lifes range from simple, formal arrangements set against dark backdrops to fruit set in landscapes to elaborate studies arranged on tables in interiors. Two of the most ambitious are Fruit in a Basket (fig. 2), which depicts a table laden with fruits in front of a window looking out onto a garden, house and expanse of sky, and Apples, Pears and Primroses on a Table (fig. 3), set in a bourgeois drawing room with marble mantelpiece, gilded clock, Courbet’s own dressing gown and one of his landscapes.⁹ It would be natural to assume that the first still lifes were simple in conception, and that they gradually developed into the more elaborate compositions, but Laurence des Cars has warned against this temptation to sequence them in this way.¹⁰ However, even if it is not possible or desirable to order them, they can certainly be grouped. Examples of the simpler arrangements with which NG 5983 can be compared includes include Apples and Pears (fig. 5), in which the fruit is piled compactly on a neutral buff surface against a dark background, the fruit itself framed by its foliage. The group is dominated by red apples, as with NG 5983 a layer of rich colour added over an underlayer. Many of [page [238]] [page [239]] [page 240] the fruit display blemishes, and also reflections in their glossy skins added with strokes of white. In Still Life with Apples and Pears (fig. 6) the fruit is similarly piled high in a shallow dish (including the same green apples as in NG 5983), the brightly lit fruit contrasting with the brooding mass of tree against which they are set. However, the crucial difference between these examples and NG 5983 lies in the pewter jug and glass, which, it has been widely noted, recalls the tradition of Chardin.¹¹ And this is no coincidence. The re‐evaluation of still life at this period touched on above was intimately bound up with a reassessment of Chardin’s work, which included articles by Théophile Thoré and an exhibition of historical painting organised by Philippe Burty at the Galerie Martinet in 1860, which included more than forty pictures by the artist .¹²

The fruit in a number of Chardin’s still lifes (but by no means all – Apple, Pear and Orange of 1871–2 (not in Fernier’s catalogue; Glasgow, Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum) is a study of beautiful, ripe fruit, in, it appears, the peak of condition), are blemished, whether through disease, attack by grubs or natural decay. Some of the apples in NG 5983 are spotted with brown, as are those in Still Life with Red Apples (fig. 7). Many commentators have read this as a sign of transience, a traditional aspect of still life, of which one of the most famous examples is Caravaggio’s Basket of Fruit (about 1599; Milan, Pinacoteca Ambrosiana).¹³ But a vanitas reading has also to be related to Courbet’s own situation at the time, as Laurence des Cars writes: ‘But these Courbets, these momento mori are not exercises in style: they are loaded by the artist with his own history’.¹⁴ Others have further designated the fruit as a substitution for the human models Courbet was lacking (and on this point it is interesting to note that Courbet magnified their size in relation to their foliage), in which case the blemishes could be read also as a comment on the human condition, which goes further than a simple vanitas reading on the transience of life.¹⁵ However, despite their (sometimes) blemished condition (which could be after all the natural condition of much fruit available in an era before obsession with perfection), the fruits are ultimately a life‐affirming image, both objects of aesthetic beauty and symbols of plenty whose essence Courbet has endeavoured to capture before their inevitable decay.¹⁶

On 15 of the still lifes painted at this period can be found the inscription ‘Ste.‐Pélagie’, despite the fact that many, for example Apples, Pears and Primroses on a Table (fig. 4), were most likely to have been painted in the clinic at Neuilly. Courbet ante‐dated to 1871 many of the works from this period; the additional recording of the place of his imprisonment has been read as an exorcising of this period of his life.¹⁷ It may also have been that he added the name of the prison because he found that the prison paintings continued to sell well.¹⁸ NG 5983, despite its date of 1871, could equally well have been painted at Neuilly in early 1872.¹⁹

Provenance

NG 5983 has been identified as one of the paintings acquired by Louis Latouche (1829–1884) from the list compiled by Dr Charles Blondon (1825–1906) of Courbet’s paintings made in captivity;²⁰ according to Fernier it was at one point with Raphaël Gérard (Raphaël Louis Felix (1886–1963), 4 avenue de Messine). It was the property of Alfred E. Daber (active 1920–1970) in 1949, when exhibited at the Galerie Alfred Daber;²¹ bought from Daber by Arthur Tooth & Sons, from whom purchased in 1951.

Former Owners: Latouche and Gérard

Louis Latouche was a dealer and an artist who participated in the first Impressionist exhibition in 1874. After 1875 he left the running of his business to his wife in order to concentrate on his work as an artist. In August 1886 she sold the business to Paul Contet (born 1859).²² Gérard was one of those dealers who was condemned after the Liberation for having dealt with confiscated paintings, which he sold to German museums during the occupation.²³

Exhibitions

Paris 1949 (18); Copenhagen 1949 (28); London 1951 (22); London 1977 (not numbered); Paris and London 1977–8 (115); London 1978 (not numbered); Hamburg and Frankfurt 1978–9 (Frankfurt only; 294); New York 1988–9 (81); Lausanne and Stockholm 1998–9 (62); Bristol, Newcastle and London 2005 (not numbered); Vienna 2012 (fig. 17 in catalogue).

Literature

Léger 1929, p. 168; Davies and Gould 1970, p. 39; Fernier 1977–8, II, p. 122, no. 764; Toussaint 1977, pp. 189–90 (English edn), pp. 210–11 (French edn); Peter‐Klaus Schuster in Hofmann and Herding 1978, pp. 312–13 ; Courthion 1987, no. 769; Faunce and Nochlin 1988, p. 197; Przyblyski 1996, p. 31; Zutter, ‘Courbet après 1855. Un peintre à la recherche d’un nouveau rapport entre homme, nature et société’, in Zutter and Chu 1998–9, pp. 48, 146 and no. 62; des Cars 2000, p. 38; Bajou 2003, p. 379; Brettell and Eisenmann 2006, p. 184; des Cars 2007, p. 418.

Notes