The Apostle Jean Journet
1850
Medium
Lithograph in black on wove paper
Dimensions
Image: 24 × 17 cm (9 1/2 × 6 3/4 in.); Sheet: 47.2 × 34.2 cm (18 5/8 × 13 1/2 in.)
Classification
lithograph
Department
Prints and Drawings
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
36828
Rights
Public Domain
About this artwork
Jean Journet was a nineteenth-century secular evangelist who traveled throughout France and Belgium preaching on behalf of the Fourier movement, a form of utopian socialism that aspired to the creation of social harmony. This portrait of Journet is surrounded by verses intended to be sung by the reader as a moralizing call to change. Courbet's use of this format of text combined with image-more commonly found in crude, popular woodcuts-signals his solidarity with the movement and its popular roo...
About the Artist
Gustave Courbet · 1819–1877
Jean Désiré Gustave Courbet (1819-1877) was a French painter who revolutionized 19th-century art as the founding figure of the Realism movement. Born in Ornans, a small town in the Doubs region of France, Courbet came from a prosperous farming family with anti-monarchical roots—his maternal grandfather had participated in the French Revolution. This background shaped his lifelong commitment to dep...