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Gustave Courbet (French, 1819–1877)
Young Ladies of the Village, 1851–52
Oil on canvas; 76 3/4 x 102 3/4 in. (194.9 x 261 cm)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Gift of Harry Payne Bingham, 1940 (40.175)
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The exhibition of this painting at the Salon of 1852 unleashed what the critic Champfleury later identified as the artist's "second scandal," succeeding that of A Burial at Ornans (1849–50; Musée d'Orsay, Paris) at the previous Salon. Critics were appalled by the work's unvarnished realism and disparities in scale: they were nearly unanimous in reproaching Courbet for the "ugliness" of the three young women, for whom the artist's sisters served as models, as well as for the disproportionately small scale of the cattle, "fit for a park in Lilliput." Courbet's suggestive use of the term demoiselles (young ladies) to denote the trio of young women from the village also provoked his critics, who took issue with the blurring of class boundaries that the term implied: "In the past, there were village girls and the demoiselles of the city, and the world was no worse off for it. ... Dressed this way, the village girls take on the status of demoiselles."
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