Millet certainly meant for the painting to call attention to the plight of the rural poor. Gleaning was perhaps the lowest form of work for women in French society, a practice wherein female peasants were allowed to comb the fields after the harvest, "gleaning" bits of grain that were left behind to take home for food hours of hunched-over labor would often be rewarded with a small amount of meal. Part of a "trilogy" of paintings celebrating France's rural denizens, The Gleaners serves as something of a feminine pendant to Courbet's The Stone Breakers (1849-50). Artistically, Courbet legendarily stated, "A Burial at Ornans was in reality the burial of Romanticism," opening up a new visual style for an increasingly modern world. Third, Courbet's gritty depiction showed the fashionable Salon-goers of Paris their new political equals in the country, as the 1848 Revolution had established universal male suffrage. Second, he eschewed any spiritual value beyond the service the painting, often compared to El Greco's Burial of Count Orgaz (1586), leaves out El Greco's depiction of Christ and the heavens. First, he made a painting of a mundane topic with unknown people (each attendee is given a personalized portrait) on a scale traditionally reserved for history painting. By depicting a simple rural funeral service in the town of his birth, Courbet accomplished several things. With A Burial at Ornans, Courbet made his name synonymous with the young Realist movement. Gustave Courbet, Édouard Manet, and others purposefully courted controversy and used the media to enhance their celebrity in a manner that continues among artists to this day.
Following the explosion of newspaper printing and mass media in the wake of the Industrial Revolution, Realism brought in a new conception of the artist as self-publicist.Though they continued submitting works to the Salons of the official Academy of Art, they were not above mounting independent exhibitions to defiantly show their work. Realist painters took aim at the social mores and values of the bourgeoisie and monarchy upon who patronized the art market. Realism was the first explicitly anti-institutional, nonconformist art movement.This led to unflinching, sometimes "ugly" portrayals of life's unpleasant moments and the use of dark, earthy palettes that confronted high art's ultimate ideals of beauty. Realism concerned itself with how life was structured socially, economically, politically, and culturally in the mid-19 th century.Philosophically, Realism embraced the progressive aims of modernism, seeking new truths through the reexamination and overturning of traditional systems of values and beliefs. Literally, this is due to its conviction that everyday life and the modern world were suitable subjects for art. Realism is broadly considered the beginning of modern art.
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