Maison de Courbet

The Maison de Courbet in Ornans is the house where Gustave Courbet, the leading painter of French Realism, was born in 1819 and where his family lived, and it forms part of the departmental museum that bears his name. It stands on the Place Robert Fernier, in the old centre of the town, close to the Loue river, and its date goes back to the sixteenth century, with parts of the building protected as monuments historiques. The house offers a way to meet the painter in the setting of his childhood and to understand the world that fed his art.

Courbet grew up in a comfortable family of landowners. His father, Régis, owned land and vineyards in the valley, and his mother, Sylvie, and his sisters Zoé, Zélie and Juliette were close to him throughout his life, and the sisters appear in several of his paintings, notably the large canvas of village girls giving alms. The town and its people were his first subjects. He drew and painted the houses along the river, the rocks, the springs of the valley, the villagers, the hunters and the woodcutters, and he took these subjects to Paris, where their direct, unidealised treatment shocked the critics. In 1849 and 1850 he painted a large work, A Burial at Ornans, with townspeople as the mourners, an image that came to mark the start of the Realist movement. His statement that he could not paint angels because he had never seen any is one of the best-known remarks in the history of art.

The museum in the house shows works by Courbet and by artists in his circle, along with drawings, objects and documents that illustrate his life and career, and it also holds exhibitions that look at aspects of his art. Because the best-known canvases are in museums in Paris and elsewhere, the interest here is in the place and the context, and in the rooms of the old house, with their period feel. Visitors can follow his journey from Ornans to Paris, his involvement in the Paris Commune and his exile in Switzerland, where he died in 1877.

Opening hours depend on the season, with a longer day in summer, and the museum is closed on certain holidays. Tickets are charged, with reductions, and admission is free on the first Sunday of the month and for certain groups. Allow an hour.

The house suits art lovers, students of the nineteenth century and families. The riverside streets, the Château d'Ornans and the Vallon de la Loue extend the visit, and the Centre Culturel d'Ornans holds events.