[57] Gaillard Senior (a sort of Odger), cobbler of Belleville and
democratic stump orator. Appointed, April 8, to the Presidency of the
Commission of Barricades.
[58] As a painter Courbet has been very diversely judged. He was the
chief of the ultra-realistic school, and therefore a natural subject
for the contempt and abuse of the admirers of “legitimate art.” But
his later use of the political power entrusted to him has drawn down
upon him the wrath of an immense majority of the French public, which
his artistic misdemeanours had scarcely touched. On the sixteenth of
April he was elected a member of the Commune by the 6th arrondissement
of Paris, and forthwith appointed Director of the Beaux Arts. Until
this time his life had been purely professional, and consequently of
mediocre interest for the general public. He was born at Ornans,
department of the Doubs, in 1819, and received his primary
instructions from the Abbé Gousset, afterwards Archbishop of Rheims.
He first applied himself to the study of mathematics, painting the
while, and apparently aiming at a fusion of both pursuits. He
subsequently read for the bar for a short time, and, finally, adopting
art as his sole profession, threw himself heart and soul into a
Rénaissance movement as the apostle of a new style. The peculiarities
of his manner soon brought him into notoriety, and a school of
imitators grouped itself around him. His pride became a proverb. In
1870 he was offered the cross of the Legion of Honour, and refused it,
arrogantly declaring that he would have none of a distinction given to
tradesmen and ministers. The part he took in the destruction of the
Colonne Vendôme is familiar to all readers of the English press. Three
weeks after the fall of the Commune he was denounced by a Federal
officer, and discovered at the house of a friend hiding in a wardrobe,
and in September was condemned by the tribunal at Versailles to six
months’ imprisonment and a fine of 600 francs—a slight penalty that
astonished everyone.