COVE

Courbet brings rural life experience into the capital of France, the most elite environment for arts. In effect, Courbet heroizes the common humanity. It was seen as exalting the commoner to make them seem noble.  At the center of the painting are both the grave and the gravedigger. Courbet gives the simple labor(gravedigger) an unexpected recognition and dignity in this painting.

The painting is divided into three groups: the clergymen(left), town officials (center), and mourning women(right). Courbet treated each of these different types of figures equally. The equal treatment of the models has been termed as "Democracy in painting." The faces and poses of the figures have not been idealized.

Courbet uses the dog (wandered by) as a symbol of the authenticity of the experience. Some of the figures are genuinely mourning, others seem distracted, which gives the sense of typical distractions of life at a funeral. The child is seen at the extreme right of the canvas, who appears to be lost in her thoughts.

Romanticism was about favoring the beautiful aspects of life and enhancing it to an ideal life. Courbet's paintings were the opposite of Romanticism, so other artists and the general public heavily scrutinized it. It was regarded as anticlerical and called "the ugliness" in the beginning.  It was finally accepted as the idea of "universal understanding," which became a movement in the 19^Th century. Different periods can influence what we see as aesthetically pleasing.

References:

"A Burial at Ornans - Gustave Courbet - Google Arts & Culture." Google, Google, artsandculture.google.com/asset/a-burial-at-ornans/jwESwQ4qvb87oQ?hl=en.

 "A Movement in a Moment: Realism." Phaidon, www.phaidon.com/agenda/art/articles/2015/june/10/a-movement-in-a-moment-....