Gustave Courbet 1819-1877, was born in Ornans, Doubs, Kingdom of France.

Gustave Courbet was a French painter, who led the Realism Movement, in the 19th-century French Painting. Committed to painting only what he could see, he rejected academic convention and romanticism of the previous generation of visual artists. His independence set an example, that was important to later artists, such as the Impressionists and the cubists. He occupied an important place in the 19th-century French painting, as an innovator and as an artist willing to make bold social statements through his work. Courbet’s paintings of the late1840sand the early 1850s brought him his first recognition. They challenged convention by depicting unidealised peasants and workers, often on a grand scale traditionally reserved for paintings of religious and or historical contents. He subsequently painted mostly less overtly political character: seascapes, landscapes, hunting s scenes, still-lifes, nudes. He went to Paris in 1839 to join the studio of Steuben and Hesse, but soon left to develop his own style by studying the works of the master’s in the Louvre and painting copies of their work. Though his first work were in, Odalisque, inspired by the writing of Victor Hugo, he soon chose to base his painting on observed reality. Among his early paintings during the 1840s were several self-portraits, in which he portrayed himself in various roles. Trips to Netherlands and Belgium strengthened his belief that painters should portray the life around them. In 1849 he achieved his first salon success, with his After Dinner at Ornans. The work is reminiscent of Chardin and Le Nain. In 1849-50, he painted Stone Breakers, which Proudhon admired as an icon of peasant life. The first of his great works, Courbet painted the piece, inspired by a scene of so complete an expression of poverty he witnessed on the roadside. Courbet’s work belonged neither to the predominant romantic nor to neo-classical schools. History painting did not interest him He believed that an artist of a period of time is incapable of of reproducing the aspect of another period—past or future. He maintained that the only possible source of a living art is the artist’s own experience. He and Millet found inspiration painting the lives of the peasants and workers. He painted figurative compositions, on subjects that were considered vulgar such as rural bourgeoisie, peasants and working conditions of the poor. His work, along with those of Millet and Daumier, became known as realism . For Courbet realism dealth not with the perfection of line and form, but entailed spontaneous and rough handling of paint, suggesting direct observation by the artist while portraying the irregularities in nature. He depicted the harshness in life, and thereby challenging contemporary academic ideas of art. The salon found him triumphant with his The Stone Breakers, Peasants of Flagey, and The Burial At Ornans. For The Burial, the people who attended the funeral were the models for the painting. The result is a realistic presentation of the event. But the painting drew both praises and fierce denunciations from the public. It was judged as as a work that had thrust itself into the grand tradition of history painting, like an upstart in dirty boots crashing in a genteel party. The painting lacks the sentimental rhetoric that is expected in a genre painting. Moreover the mourners make no theatrical gesture of grief, and their faces appear more caricatured than ennobled. Eventually, the public became more interested in the new realistic approach, and Romanticism lost popularity. Courbet became a celebrity and was spoken of as a genius. In 1855 he submitted 14 paintings out of which one of his monumental work, The Artist’s Studio was rejected. The work is an allegory of Courbet’s life, as an artist, seen as an heroic venture, in which he is flanked by friends and admirers, including, art critic, Champfleury, Charles Baudelaire, and Art Collector, on the right, and priests, prostitutes, grave diggers, merchants and others , as the people of the other world of trivial life of misery, poverty and wealth shown as the challenges and opposition to the left. In the foreground of the left side is a man with dogs, who is an allegory of the French Emperor. Courbet shows his disdain for the Emperor, and depicts him as a criminal suggesting his ownership of France as illegal. In 1857 Courbet showed six paintings, including Young Ladies on on the Banks of Seine (Summer, depicting two prostitutes lying under a tree ,casually displaying their undergarment, as opposed to the conventional timeless nude women in landscapes, that provoked a scandal and shocked the art Critics. Courbet also exhibited one of the first of his many hunting scenes, Hind at Bay in the Snow , The Quarry. During the 1860s he painted more of his erotic works , culminating in ,The Origin of the World, depicting female genitalia, and Sleep, featuring two women in bed. After 1873, during his self imposed exile his his important works include several paintings of Trout, hooked and bleeding from the gill, that have been interpreted as allegorical self portraits of the exiled artist. In his final years Courbet painted landscapes and water mysteriously emerging from the earth. Courbet is declared to be the father of of the new artists. He is portrayed as the father of all Modern Art, and is supposed to have prepare the way for the emergence of Cubism in the 20-th century . Monet, Whistler, Cézanne, Hopper, etc admired his works.