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A Burial at Ornans

Artist: Gustave Courbet (1819–1877)
Date: 1849–1850
Dimensions: 315 x 668 cm
Medium: Oil on canvas
Location: Musée d’Orsay, Paris, France

A Burial at Ornans shows the funeral of an ordinary villager in Courbet’s home town in eastern France. Around fifty life-size mourners gather at an open grave under a grey sky, against the cliffs of the Jura.

A closer look

Such a huge canvas was traditionally reserved for great historical or religious scenes. Courbet used it instead for the townspeople of Ornans, the priest, the mayor, the gravedigger, family members in black, many of them recognisable portraits of real neighbours. Nobody seems heroic or idealised; some look bored, distracted or tearful. When it was shown at the Salon of 1850–51 it caused a scandal: critics found it ugly and vulgar. It became the manifesto of Realism.

History of the painting

After the scandal of the Salon of 1850–51 the huge canvas found no buyer, and Courbet kept it rolled up for years; he showed it again in his own Pavilion of Realism in 1855. After his death in exile in 1877 it passed to his sister Juliette, who gave it to the Louvre in 1881. It moved to the Musée d'Orsay in 1986, where it faces the other great manifesto of Realism, The Painter's Studio.

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