Realism in Art in Paris in the 19th Century Prostitutes and Third Class Carriages
The 19th century was a century of Realism, Romanticism and Victorianism; a conflict existed in society between wanting to explore boundaries (the romantic aspect), expose reality, and wanting to cover over indecencies (the prudish Victorian aspect). Puritanism and prurience defined the two juxtaposing poles. Realism was like the middle ground, the area of the field that artists sought to highlight. Yet, for artists like Courbet, Daumier and Manet, certain subjects—like a mother holding a sleeping baby in the nursing pose on a third-class train, or lesbian lovers, or a nude woman—were deemed to provocative, too revealing, too dirty, sensual and real and thus too sensational for a Victorian crowd. They were appealing to those with Realist leanings, but Romantics were not quite satisfied with them either because they did not put emphasis on the beautiful and the passionate; instead, they gave attention to flaws, imperfections, and problems without seeking to elevate or highlight anything good or noble or grand in feeling or desire. The paintings satisfied none but the Realist school while those with Victorian sentiments found them to be taboo and not meant for public consumption and those with Romantic sentiments found them distasteful for lack of beauty. This paper will discuss Le Sommeil by Courbet, The Third-Class Carriage by Daumier and Olympia by Manet and explain why the public found these works scandalous—not only in terms of subject matter but also in terms of style.

Courbet’s painting was said to be inspired by Baudelaire’s poem “Delphine et Hippolyte” in the controversial Les Fleurs du mal, a work of romantic era writings (Michallat, 2007). What makes Courbet’s painting unique, however, for the time was its focus on realism: the bodies of the two lesbian lovers are not idealized but are rather depicted with all their imperfections evident. The faces of the two women are not given any added erotic glow, nor are the bodies proportioned in such a way that they are exceedingly seductive in appearance. They are not depicted in the frantic, heightened act of love but rather are shown intertwined post-coitus, energy spent, bodies exhausted, brows furrowed. There is not much attempt to hide the nudity of the two women: and the painting is provocative for suggestive glimpses of female genitalia while both women’s breasts are on display. Yet the two women seem to have no interest in interacting with the viewer. The brunette is fast asleep and the blonde appears to be frowning over some vexatious thought...…have its noses rubbed in the business and everyday life of the lower classes that it sought to ignore.

The paintings by Daumier, Manet and Courbet depicted either a sensual side of life with unflinching boldness, or a sensual side of life with unabashed realism (flaws and all), or a lower class side of life that much of the art-going public would have flinched to be forced to look at in comparison with its own levels of society. Yet these three artists did just that to their public. Daumier compared the upper classes to the lower classes in the carriage set, and Manet dared the public to look at a prostitute posing as a Venus with a knowing look that suggested she knew what all the Parisian men were up to. Courbet linked sexuality with lesbian love and not in a heightened or romantic way but rather than a realistic, erotic way that caused the public to reflect the grimace of the blonde lesbian’s face. These paintings were neither Romantic nor Victorian, and therefore were not appropriate to the tastes of the art-going public of the 19th century. They were paintings of Realism that challenged the sensibilities and taboos of the time by obliging the public to look where it least expected.