Scandalous Art of the 19th Century

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 in her own dream. The painting is unabashedly erotic even though it does not exaggerate the features of the women by making them appear to be possessed of some otherworldly beauty as an artist might give to an Athena or Venus. These are two basically ordinary women who just so happen to be depicted in bed, nude, twined about one another—one relaxed, the other having a kind of fitful dream. The painting would have shocked the sensibilities of the Puritan and Victorian audiences—likely much more than the Romantic members of the public, since the latter would have at least appreciated the work for its depiction of human love and passion. However, the fact that the Victorian era muffled all expressions of illicit sexual desire should help to explain why this painting would have been shocking to the public. Lesbianism was certainly far more taboo then than now. Thus, the painting shocked both for content and style—i.e., the unglamorous and somewhat lurid depiction of women in love.
The painting Olympia by Manet was shocking for different reasons. It was not that Olympia was depicted reclining nude on her bed while a black servant, fully clothed, brings her flowers. Nudes had been depicted in art for centuries. In fact, the painting by Manet was essentially a revision of a painting by Titan entitled Venus of Urbino painted three centuries prior, which featured the goddess reclining in much the same fashion (Millett-Gallant, 2010). That was not the problem and if Manet had entitled the woman “Venus” it might not have been much of a scandal. However, he did not. What he did was to equate Venus with a woman of the streets and essentially dare the public to admit that it loved prostitutes just as much if not more than the goddess of beauty. This dare was what shocked the public—not the nudity. The shock came from the rather bold and challenging expression on Olympia’s face as she stared at the viewer, confronting him with an unashamed look. That boldness of expression and the fact that the name “Olympia” was one typically associated with prostitutes in Paris at the time was enough to shock the public: it was as if Manet was throwing prostitution in their faces and scoffing at them for wincing (Clark, 1999). The orchid, the pearl earrings, the shawl, the black ribbon around the neck—all of these were indications that Olympia was indeed a prostitute and that the name was not mistaken. The style of the painting was not a problem here—it was very much the content.
The Third-Class Carriage by Daumier shocked the public because it focused attention on the dismal, dirty, cramped quarters of the low class travelers of a third-class railway carriage. There was nothing sentimental, beautiful, noble or charming. Instead, the audience was being asked to sympathize with a group of people it typically paid no attention to. Victorian society was not interested in sharing in the burdens of the underprivileged. It was interested in its own affairs. It did not want to spend time peering into the underbelly of society anymore than it thought it appropriate to look through the keyhole of a bedroom door at two lesbians asleep in on another’s arms. The idea was entirely distasteful. Daumier’s style was also challenging because of a dismal, brown tone that dominated the painting. There was none of the color of a Van Gogh or Monet. There was none of the wonderful impressionism of those painters. This was grizzly by comparison. The subjects’ faces are shown entirely devoid of enthusiasm and the painting was one of three in a series—the other two depicting the first-class and the second-class carriages. The entire body of work was meant to be satirical and ironic, with the final third-class carriage painting meant to pack the punch (Browne, 2020). The punch landed with decided effect and the public was somewhat horrified that it should 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.
References
Browne, E. (2020). The third-class carriage. Retrieved from https://www.sartle.com/artwork/the-third-class-carriage-honore-daumier
Clark, T. J. (1999). The painting of modern life. Princeton.
Michallat, W. (2007). Lesbian inscriptions in Francophone society and culture. Durham Modern Languages.
Millett-Gallantt, A. (2010). The disabled body in contemporary art. Palgrave Macmillan.