A Burial at Ornans

In the front right of Courbet's Burial at Ornans, a hunting dog looks casually back at the viewer. In academic Salon painting a dog was allowed in only if it stood for something, usually loyalty or faithful mourning. Courbet's dog stands for nothing. That was the scandal at the 1850 Salon. Courbet had painted a real village funeral at the six-metre scale convention reserved for history painting. The dog is the manifesto. Ordinary life deserves the great scale, and it needs no allegory to earn it. Now at Musée d'Orsay, Paris @museeorsay