While the impressionists, as as group, were of varying political persuasions, an artist of an earlier generation made his republican politics the final act of his very public life: Gustave Courbet.

During the “week of blood” in 1871, when the French army fought and crushed the self-appointed Paris Commune, Courbet, a leading communard, waged war on a statue.

Courbet was made Director of Museums, but his new appointment did nothing to dampen his republican convictions. On 16 April he was formally inducted into the Commune of Paris, and plotting to bring down the Column of the Vendome, a plan Renoir found incomprehensible: “he could think of nothing but the Vendome Column. The happiness of humanity depended on its being pulled down.”*

It was pulled down, but the symbolism was rendered meaningless: the communards’ fight was lost. Courbet was jailed. He was also fined part of the cost of rebuilding the column, which stands in Paris today. But he died shortly before the first payment came due.

Courbet’s self-portrait in jail:

*From Sue Roe’s The Private Lives of the Impressionists, which I’m reading on the occasion of the exhibition at SAM