THROUGHOUT 1848, Europe was in convulsions as widespread revolutionary unrest ushered in what became known as “The Spring of Nations” and, in February that year, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels published The Communist Manifesto.

The political ferment was as wide-reaching as it was spontaneous, with unstable alliances of social strata and classes with disparate political aims that could not endure. Nevertheless, it ushered in the final transformation of an archaic and unproductive feudal serfdom into the “modern” and “efficient” capitalist labour market. But the whip was to stay, albeit wielded by a different hand.

An independent-minded, self-proclaimed republican who supported the poor and oppressed and continuously irked the ruling elites, Gustave Courbet possessed the kind of spirit needed for such a  time.

In 1849, with the Spring of Nations still a fresh memory, Courbet painted The Stone Breakers and with it announced the advent of realism. Courbet had seen the two men depicted breaking stones at the road side near his home town of Ornans and, moved by their plight, recalled: “It is not often that one encounters so complete an expression of poverty and so, right then and there, I got the idea for a painting. I told them to come to my studio the next morning.”

The imposingly large canvas (165 x 257 cm) is imbued with dignity and resignation. Courbet portrays these humble, downtrodden workers in worn-out clothes who have “nothing to lose but their chains.” Their plight is as strikingly evident as it is political. The ruthless exploitation of cheap rural labour to build and maintain a local road is a clear denunciation of class oppression.

Significantly, Courbet paints the two at eye-level and with the dark hill cutting off an escape route for the viewer, the impact is augmented spectacularly.

The monochromatic palette and the attention to detail is uniform throughout, with the clothes, anatomy, the tools and every stone given the same value. At the same time, the brush work is not pedantic or inventorising. It has an assured fluency and ruggedness but also economy in each stroke.

“Their tools are scattered on the ground: a hod, a stretcher, a hoe, a rustic pot in which they carry their midday soup, and a piece of black bread in a scrip. All this takes place in full sunlight, by a ditch alongside a road... I have made none of it up,” he wrote to a friend, visibly affected.

Critics were outraged by The Stone Breakers at the Paris Salon of 1850 and even his friend, the poet Charles Baudelaire, disapproved. Yet, three years later, Eugene Delacroix wrote in The Journal: “I went to see the paintings by Courbet. I was astonished by the vigour and the relief of his vast picture; but what a painting! What a subject!”  

Although as an avowed pacifist Courbet did not take up arms in 1848, when the socialist Paris Commune was formed in March 1871, he shared its political goals and joined it.

Courbet was elected to the Commune’s council, was put in charge of education and was a prominent actor in the disassembling of the Vendome column, a symbol of Napoleon III’s oppression.

He successfully argued it was “devoid of all artistic value,” promoted militarism and had no place in a republic. He had anticipated by 150 years the present questioning of the role of public statues and monuments.

In 1855, Courbet nailed his colours to the mast in the pamphlet Realist Manifesto. He didn’t give a monkey’s for “art for art’s sake,” his interest was “to translate the customs, the ideas, the appearances of my epoch according to my own appreciation of it... to create living art, that is my goal.”

Years later, Emile Zola memorably wrote: “After those remarkable works by Manet and Courbet, no-one would now dare to say that the present day is unworthy of being painted.”

After the Commune’s defeat in 1871, he was jailed for six months and fined £2,000 for his troubles. He left for Switzerland as soon as he was freed and in May 1877 was ordered to pay for the restoration of  the Vendome column. Courbet died on December 31, 1877, aged 58 — a day before the first instalment was due.

He wanted to be remembered as belonging to no regime “except the regime of liberty.”