This thesis explores ways in which the mid-nineteenth-century current of positivist thought impacted upon the work of the French artist Gustave Courbet (1819-1877). Guided by certain methodological imperatives set out in the theories of Hayden White and Dominick LaCapra – in particular LaCapra’s identification of the need for historical practice to avoid reductive interpretation of data and to recognise the formulation of concepts through intersecting domains of knowledge and the specificity of their articulation in different primary sources – this thesis focuses upon interpretations of Courbet’s work formulated between 1848 and 1878, examines ideas developed within the intersecting domains of positivism and medical science, and highlights the deployment of these ideas for political leverage across the entire political spectrum. The thesis discovers ways in which positivist interpreters of Courbet’s work, including the artist himself, sought to criticise and resolve the social and political problems of the time by drawing upon theories designed to achieve social harmony through scientific understanding of human nature and its evolution. The thesis demonstrates that numerous social commentators referred to the images of people and social conditions in Courbet’s paintings to express positivist views about social decay, the enduring human potential to reform such decay, and an inevitable achievement of social harmony. I show that positivists interpreted the artist’s work with recourse to disciplines such as biology, physiology and physiognomy, as well as concepts such as ‘the physical and the moral,’ according to which the various physical, mental, emotional and moral dimensions of the human constitution were closely interconnected, evident in physical appearance, and crucially influenced by the changing environmental conditions impacting upon them, including society. I also show that, according to such prescriptions, the physical appearance of ordinary contemporary people represented in Courbet’s paintings indicated their physical and moral state and by extension the social conditions forming this state. Such physiognomical principles were often associated with caricature and portraiture to advance the critical and affective nature of Courbet’s paintings, which were seen as aesthetic stimulants in an evolutionary process of social reform. As the project shows, positivists thought that Courbet’s paintings expressed certain ideal notions of equality and materiality that served the political, ideological and often anti-religious interests of the writers concerned; in these views, all humans fostered the same inherent physiological desire for altruistic existence and shared equal status with animals and organisms as physiological beings conceived and sustained within biological nature.

La présente thèse propose la première monographie sur la société des Buveurs d’eau. Cette association artistique de secours mutuels rassembla dans le Paris des années 1840 onze peintres, sculpteurs et écrivains débutants qui, pour la plupart, allaient entrer dans l’histoire non pas grâce à leurs œuvres, mais parce qu’ils allaient devenir les exemples d’un type de créateur : l’artiste ou l’écrivain bohème. Ce fut leur sort à cause d’un livre que l’un d’eux publia en 1851, et ce fut à leur grand dam et au dam de l’histoire. Les Scènes de la vie de bohème d’Henry Murger fondent depuis plus d’un siècle et demi l’idée que l’on se fait de la première bohème parisienne. Elles doivent leur popularité originale à leur adaptation au théâtre de boulevard en 1849 et leur popularité durable à leur adaptation à l’opéra en 1896, dans La Bohème de Puccini. Elles doivent leur place dans les travaux universitaires aux qualités de document et de tableau de mœurs qu’on leur attribue depuis leur parution. Ce sont d’abord ces qualités du livre de Murger, largement admises sans être historiquement vérifiées, et souvent amplifiées depuis trente ans par l’histoire des représentations et par la sociologie, qui rendent les Buveurs d’eau aussi illustres qu’inconnus. C’est également l’obscurité des œuvres de ces hommes, majoritairement artistes, qui éloigne les chercheurs – et en premier lieu les historiens de l’art – de l’histoire de cette société. Or, il est possible de faire cette histoire, à l’aide des outils de l’histoire de l’art d’abord et de l’histoire littéraire ensuite. Ses fondements sont jetés ici et ils répondent à une question trop rarement posée : quel est l’art de la bohème ? / This thesis is the first monograph on the artistic brotherhood of the Water Drinkers, a mutual aid association that united eleven young painters, sculptors and writers in 1840s Paris. Most of these men were to enter history not thanks to their art but because they were to exemplify the bohemian artist or writer. That was due to a book published by one of the group members in 1851—to the disservice of the Water Drinkers and history alike. For more than a century and a half, Henri Murger’s La Vie de Bohème has been the basis of our notion of bohemian Paris. This book owes its initial fame to its theatrical adaptation in 1849 and its lasting fame to its operatic adaptation in 1896, in Puccini’s La Bohème. It owes its place in academic research to its reputation as a historical document and a novel of manners. It is first and foremost this reputation—widely accepted though historically unverified, and frequently enhanced by cultural historians and sociologists over the past three decades—that is responsible for the Water Drinkers being unknown as artists, and famous as bohemians. It is additionally the obscurity of the works of the group members, chiefly visual artists, that is responsible for scholars and especially art historians not studying their history. Yet their history can be studied, by means of art history first and literary history second. This thesis lays the foundation for this study and answers a question too seldom asked: what is bohemian art?

Mémoire numérisé par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal. / Pour respecter les droits d'auteur, la version électronique de cette thèse ou ce mémoire a été dépouillée, le cas échéant, de ses documents visuels et audio-visuels. La version intégrale de la thèse ou du mémoire a été déposée au Service de la gestion des documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal.

Mémoire numérisé par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal / Pour respecter les droits d'auteur, la version électronique de cette thèse ou ce mémoire a été dépouillée, le cas échéant, de ses documents visuels et audio-visuels. La version intégrale de la thèse ou du mémoire a été déposée au Service de la gestion des documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal.