Courbet Working Class

Courbet focus on the realist view of the working class in everyday life to portray his socialist political view to the capitalism France. In 1848, there was peasant revolt against the bourgeois (the Revolutions of 1848) demanding better pay and improved working conditions; thus, the French army put down uprising within three days resulting in it large losses of life and labor became a big national concern. The attention to both the young boy’ (left) and old men’s (right) ragged work clothes, worn hands, dull hill to portrayed them as ordinary people and settings for a sense of sympathy for the working class and disdain for the upper class. Courbet used this artwork as political motivations to bring national awareness to the unseen working class with to a quiet

According to the T.J Clark’s reading, Millet portrayal of the working-class despite of the difficulty embraced poverty within a harmony green countryside while Courbet wanted to display the miserable truth via the body. Comparing to Millet’s The Gleaners (1857) whose location is at the French countryside during the harvest for a unified composition, the low hill in the background reaching everywhere expect for the upper right corner, where a tiny area of bright blue sky appears indicating the accurate account on working’s class physical and economically trapped in the mid-century French rural life. Both Millet and Courbet showed sympathy to the working class; however, Millet ’s aerial perspective depicts the gleaners ' rounded backs echo one another hard-working, but idealized peasants while Courbet depicts the two workers who wear ripped and tattered clothing working to display one of the least-paying, most backbreaking task. Millet portrayed the ordinary people as the ideal working class while Courbet want it to feel “real” by making the labor miserable to the