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Jean Désiré Gustave Courbet (June 10, 1819
– December 31, 1877) was a France|French
painter.

== Realism ==

Best known as an innovator in Realism (and
credited with coining the term), and a landscape
and seascape painter, his scenes are not
romanticism|romantic or idealized as was customary
style at the time.  Rather, he portrayed dynamic
scenery, subject to continuous and progressive
change. Courbet believed the realism|Realist
artist's mission was the pursuit of truth which
would help erase social contradictions and
imbalances.


For Courbet realism was not the perfection of line
and form, but spontaneous and rough handling of
paint, suggesting direct observation by the artist
and portraying the irregularities in nature.  He
depicted the harshness in life, and in so doing,
challenged contemporary academic ideas of art,
which brought him criticism that he deliberately
adopted a cult of ugliness.

His work, along with the works of Honoré Daumier
and Jean-François Millet, became known as
realism.



Born in Ornans (Doubs), into a prosperous farming
family which wanted him to study law, he went to
Paris in 1839, and worked at the studio of Steuben
and Hesse.  An independent spirit, he soon left,
preferring to develop his own style by studying
Spanish, Flemish and French painters and painting
copies of their work.

His first works, an Odalisque, suggested by Victor
Hugo, and a LĂ©lia, illustrating George Sand, were
literary subjects; but these he soon abandoned for
the study of real life.

A trip to the Netherlands 1847 strengthened
Courbet's feeling that painters should portray the
life around them, as Rembrandt, Hals, and the
other Dutch masters had done.

Among other works, he painted his own portrait
with his dog


== Burial at Ornans ==

Probably Courbet's most famous work is Burial at
Ornans. Courbet's painting based around what he
saw at the funeral of his grand uncle became the
first masterpiece in the Realist style. In
September 1848 he attended the funeral of his
great uncle at Ornans and later painted the huge
canvas, Burial at Ornans. He used people who had
been to the funeral as models for the painting,
which was another way that the style was new.
Previously, models were used as actors, to portray
the life of other people from other times, yet
here Courbet was painting the very people who had
been to the event. It gives a realistic look at
the townspeople of Ornans, and the people Courbet
knew.  They are shown in a realistic setting,
giving a look into what it was like to live in
Ornans. The painting caused a fuss with critics
and the public. It is an enormous work, measuring
10 by 22 feet, and depicts a funeral in a town in
the way in which painters might have painted a
picture of a royal funeral. It was unusual to take
an ordinary event and give it as much importance
and dignity as would be usual to depict royalty.
By creating such interest in this way of painting
an ordinary scene, the public grew much more
interested in this new, Realist style of work. The
lavish, decadent fantasy of romanticism lost
popularity, people desiring something more real
and closer to home. Courbet regarded this work as
not just a funeral for his uncle, but in actual
fact a funeral for Romanticism as a style. As
Courbet said, "the Burial at Ornans was in reality
the burial of Romanticism." 


The Salon of 1850 found him triumphant with the
Burial at Ornans, the Stone-Breakers (destroyed in
1945) and the Peasants of Flazey.  His style
continued to develop uniqueness, as in Village
Damsels (1852), the Wrestlers, Bathers, and A Girl
Spinning (1852).

Because he associated his ideas of realism in art
with socialism, when he had gained an audience he
promoted democratic and socialistic ideas by
writing politically motivated essays and
dissertations.

To a friend in 1850 he wrote,

:...in our so very civilized society it is
necessary for me to live the life of a savage. I
must be free even of governments.  The people have
my sympathies, I must address myself to them
directly.

== Notoriety ==

Towards the end of the 1860s, Courbet painted a
series of increasingly erotic works, culminating
in L'Origine du monde|The Origin of the World
(L'Origine du monde) (1866), depicting female
genitalia  While banned from public display, the
works only served to increase his notoriety.

His refusal of the cross of the Legion
d'Honneur|Legion of Honour offered to him by
Napoleon III made him immensely popular with those
who opposed current regime, and in 1871 under the
revolutionary Paris Commune he was placed in
charge of all the Paris art museums and saved them
from looting mobs.  After the fall of the Commune,
the subsequent government charged him with
destruction of the Place VendĂ´me|VendĂ´me column.
 A council of war tried him and condemned him to
six months imprisonment and ordered him pay
300,000 francs to restore the column.  He served
his six-month sentence, but fled to Switzerland in
1873 to avoid working at the orders of the state
to pay the fine.

Courbet died at La Tour du Peilz, Switzerland, of
a liver disease aggravated by heavy drinking.

An exhibition of his works was held in 1882 at
École des Beaux-Arts.

== See also ==
* Jacques de Champfleury|Champfleury, Les Grandes
Figures  d’hier et d’aujourd’hui (Paris,
1861)
* Mantz, "G. Courbet," Gaz. des beaux-arts (Paris,
1878)
* Emile Zola|Zola, Mes Haines (Paris, 1879)
* C Lemonnier, Les Peintres de la Vie (Paris,
1888).

== External links ==
* http://cgfa.sunsite.dk/courbet/index.html
Courbet images and biography at CGFA
* http://artchive.com/ftp_site.htm Artchive on
Courbet
*
http://www.humanitiesweb.org/human.php?s=g&p=c&a=b
&ID=12 Humanities Web on Courbet
*
http://www.artrenewal.org/asp/database/art.asp?aid
=746 Art Renewal Center; biography and images

*
http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/picture-of-mont
h/displaypicture.asp?venue=2&id=150
Courbet’s 'Low Tide at Trouville' (c.1865)
in the
http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/walker/index.as
p Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool

Commons|Gustave Courbet

1911