Gustave Courbet (1819-1877)

The self-proclaimed "proudest and most arrogant man in France" Courbet led the Realist (credited with coining the term) movement in C19th French painting, rejecting academic convention & the Romanticism of the previous generation. His late 1840s & early 1850s work challenged convention by depicting unidealised peasants & workers on a grand scale traditionally only for religious or historical subjects. He was imprisoned for 6 months in 1871 for involvement with the Paris Commune & lived in exile in Switzerland 1873

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Art .

the front cover of artforum magazine, featuring an image of waves crashing in to shore

The Wave 1869 Courbet painted figurative compositions, landscapes, seascapes, and still-lives. His work, along with that of Honoré Daumier and Jean-François Millet, became known as Realism. For Courbet realism dealt not with the perfection of line and form, but entailed spontaneous and rough handling of paint, suggesting direct observation by the artist & portraying the irregularities in nature. He depicted the harshness in life, and in so doing challenged contemporary academic ideas of art

Courbet's social realist work The Stonebreakers 1849 (1yr after Marx & Engels wrote The Communist Manifesto) was shown at the Paris Salon 1850. Courbet explained "It is not often one encounters so complete an expression of poverty and so right then and there I got the idea for a painting. I told them to come to my studio the next morning." It was destroyed during WWII with 154 other pictures, when a transport vehicle moving the pictures to castle Königstein was bombed by Allied forces 1945. Henri Fantin Latour, Social Realism, Jeff Koons, Billie Holiday, Hur Man Målar, Lost Art, Realism Art

Courbet's social realist work The Stonebreakers 1849 (1yr after Marx & Engels wrote The Communist Manifesto) was shown at the Paris Salon 1850. Courbet explained "It is not often one encounters so complete an expression of poverty and so right then and there I got the idea for a painting. I told them to come to my studio the next morning." It was destroyed during WWII with 154 other pictures, when a transport vehicle moving the pictures to castle Königstein was bombed by Allied forces 1945.

a painting of three men sitting at a table

Henri De Toulouse Lautrec

Cafe Society

Detroit Institute Of Arts

Salvation Army

20 Century

Oil Painting Reproductions

Caravaggio

Painting Reproductions

By 1848, Courbet had support among younger critics, Neo-romantics & Realists & achieved his 1st Salon success 1849 with After Dinner at Ornans. It earned a gold medal & was purchased by the state: his works would no longer require jury approval for Salon exhibition (until 1857 when the rule changed). The work was a result of trips to the Netherlands & Belgium 1846–1847 that strengthened his belief that painters should portray life around them, as Dutch masters like Rembrandt & Hals had.

a painting of a naked woman laying on the ground with her head turned to the side

Courbet's first works were an Odalisque inspired by Victor Hugo's writing & a Lélia illustrating George Sand. He soon abandoned literary influences, choosing to base work on observed reality. He thought "artists of one century [are] basically incapable of reproducing the aspect of a past or future century ..." which also ruled out history painting. Among his paintings of the early 1840s are several self-portraits, Romantic in conception, in which the artist portrayed himself in various roles.

a painting of a man with long hair and beard

Famous Self Portraits

Istoria Artei

Oil Painting Portrait

Montpellier

Famous Artists

French Artists

Courbet's parents were Régis and Sylvie Oudot Courbet in Ornans (department of Doubs). As a prosperous farming family anti-monarchicism prevailed (His grandfather fought in the French Revolution.) His 3 sisters were his first models. He moved to Paris 1839 to work at the studio of Steuben & Hesse but soon left, preferring to develop his own style by copying old master paintings in the Louvre. He often returned home to Ornans to hunt, fish & find inspiration.

an image of a painting being displayed in the middle of a room with people around it

Painters Studio

Edouard Manet

Pierre Auguste Renoir

Naha

The Artist’s Studio was completed in a 6 weeks. All the figures are allegorical representations of the figures he depicted in paintings - from all levels of society - friends & admirers including Baudelaire & a nude representing the academic tradition 1855 he presented it for display at the Paris World Fair but was refused entrance due to space concerns (the canvas was 11X20ft) so Courbet took 40 works & displayed them alongside the gallery

a painting of people standing in front of a cross with a dog on the ground

A Burial At Ornans 1849–50 records Courbet's great-uncle's funeral. It treats a prosaic ritual with unflattering realism on the giant scale of a history painting & it brought instant fame. Models were traditionally used but here Courbet said he "painted the very people... present" It lacks the sentimental rhetoric expected in genre work: his mourners make no theatrical gestures of grief & their faces seem more caricatured than ennobled. "The [painting was] in reality the burial of Romanticism".