Gustave Courbet
Overview
Jean Désiré Gustave Courbet (10 June 1819 – 31 December 1877) was a French painter
who led the Realist
movement in 19th-century French painting. The Realist movement bridged the Romantic movement (characterized by the paintings of Théodore Géricault
and Eugène Delacroix
), with the Barbizon School
and the Impressionists
. Courbet occupies an important place in 19th century French painting as an innovator and as an artist willing to make bold social commentary in his work.
Courbet painted figurative compositions, landscapes
, seascape
s, and still-lifes.
Painting
Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...
who led the Realist
Realism (visual arts)
Realism in the visual arts is a style that depicts the actuality of what the eyes can see. The term is used in different senses in art history; it may mean the same as illusionism, the representation of subjects with visual mimesis or verisimilitude, or may mean an emphasis on the actuality of...
movement in 19th-century French painting. The Realist movement bridged the Romantic movement (characterized by the paintings of Théodore Géricault
Théodore Géricault
Jean-Louis André Théodore Géricault was a profoundly influential French artist, painter and lithographer, known for The Raft of the Medusa and other paintings...
and Eugène Delacroix
Eugène Delacroix
Ferdinand Victor Eugène Delacroix was a French Romantic artist regarded from the outset of his career as the leader of the French Romantic school...
), with the Barbizon School
Barbizon school
The Barbizon school of painters were part of a movement towards realism in art, which arose in the context of the dominant Romantic Movement of the time. The Barbizon school was active roughly from 1830 through 1870...
and the Impressionists
Impressionism
Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement that originated with a group of Paris-based artists whose independent exhibitions brought them to prominence during the 1870s and 1880s...
. Courbet occupies an important place in 19th century French painting as an innovator and as an artist willing to make bold social commentary in his work.
Courbet painted figurative compositions, landscapes
Landscape art
Landscape art is a term that covers the depiction of natural scenery such as mountains, valleys, trees, rivers, and forests, and especially art where the main subject is a wide view, with its elements arranged into a coherent composition. In other works landscape backgrounds for figures can still...
, seascape
Seascape
A seascape is a photograph, painting, or other work of art which depicts the sea, in other words an example of marine art. By a backwards development, the word has also come to mean the view of the sea itself, and be applied in planning contexts to geographical locations possessing a good view of...
s, and still-lifes.
Quotations
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.
Courbet, Gustave: Letters of Gustave Courbet, 1992, University of Chicago Press, Translated by Petra Ten-Doesschate Chu, ISBN 0226116530
Painting is an essentially concrete art and can only consist of the representation of real and existing things. It is a completely physical language, the words of which consist of all visible objects. An object which is abstract, not visible, non-existent, is not within the realm of painting.
"Credo" (1861); as quoted at ICHOR Art E-Zine