Gustave Courbet
| Gustave Courbet | |
|---|---|
Gustave Courbet c. 1860s
(portrait by Étienne Carjat) |
|
| Born |
Jean Désiré Gustave Courbet 10 June 1819 Ornans, Doubs, Kingdom of France |
| Died | 31 December 1877 (aged 58) La Tour-de-Peilz, Switzerland |
| Nationality | French |
| Known for | Painting, Sculpting |
| Notable work |
A Burial At Ornans (1849–50) The Painter's Studio (1855) L'Origine du monde (1866) |
| Movement | Realism |
| Awards | Gold-Medal winner - 1848 Salon; Nominated to receive the French Legion of Honor in 1870, - Refused. |
| Patron(s) | Alfred Bruyas |
Jean Désiré Gustave Courbet (French: [ɡystav kuʁbɛ]; 10 June 1819 – 31 December 1877) was a French painter who led the Realist movement in 19th-century French painting. Committed to painting only what he could see, he rejected academic convention and the 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. Courbet occupies an important place in 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 late 1840s and early 1850s brought him his first recognition. They challenged convention by depicting unidealized peasants and workers, often on a grand scale traditionally reserved for paintings of religious or historical subjects. Courbet's subsequent paintings were mostly of a less overtly political character: landscapes, seascapes, hunting scenes, nudes and still lifes. He was imprisoned for six months in 1871 for his involvement with the Paris Commune, and lived in exile in Switzerland from 1873 until his death.
I am fifty years old and I have always lived in freedom; let me end my life free; when I am dead let this be said of me: 'He belonged to no school, to no church, to no institution, to no academy, least of all to any régime except the régime of liberty.'
Gustave Courbet was born in 1819 to Régis and Sylvie Oudot Courbet in Ornans (department of Doubs). Being a prosperous farming family, anti-monarchical feelings prevailed in the household. (His maternal grandfather fought in the French Revolution.) Courbet's sisters, Zoé, Zélie and Juliette, were his first models for drawing and painting. After moving to Paris he often returned home to Ornans to hunt, fish and find inspiration.
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