Gustave Courbet

Jean Désiré Gustave Courbet was a French painter who led the Realism movement in 19th-century French painting. Courbet’s paintings from the late 1840s and early 1850s gave him his first recognition.

Courbet’s early works bordered on Romanticism. His landscapes, seascapes, hunting scenes, nudes and still lifes are characterized by a peculiar, temperamental perception of nature and dark, saturated color. The main character was the artist himself. Courbet paid particular attention to the transfer of acute characteristics and the plasticity of shapes. He preferred to paint on toned canvases, moving from darker to lighter tones and enlivening the brightest places with sharp glares. “In my paintings, I do what the sun does in nature”, – the artist wrote.

Key ideas:

– Courbet often said: “I totally agree that a painting is concrete art. It consists only of the representation of real things… This is a completely physical language”.

– The central innovation of Courbet was a truthful, unadorned depiction of the everyday life of ordinary people.

– Courbet’s style is hostile to the idealization of the world, which stood in contrast to the art which was patronized by the government at that time. A few critics deemed Courbet the head of the realistic direction, while some people accused him of deliberately depicting the ugliness of modern life.