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1819 - 1877 • French • Painter • Realist
"The title of "realist" has been imposed upon me, as the men of 1830 had imposed upon them the title of "romantics." Titles have never given a just idea of things; were it otherwise, the work would be superfluous." - Gustave Courbet
Courbet was born in the rural town of Ornans, which he made both famous and infamous in his paintings, especially Burial at Omans (1849 ). Because this picture raised the grim, everyday life of ordinary people in a harsh, provincial landscape to the level of HISTORY PAINTING, it created a scandal. The Stone Breakers (1849)-an old and a young man doing backbreaking work beside the road-was considered equally unseemly, and dangerous in addition. The revolutions of 1848 were still fresh, and the unrest of workers was a threatening specter. Courbet's friend Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, a Socialist, saw an indictment of capitalism in The Stone Breakers, which he compared to a biblical parable. (The painting was destroyed during World War II.) Courbet is called the father of the "Realist" movement, though he demurred, as in the quotation above (see REALISM2.), that it was the labeling, not the intent he disputed. For he also wrote, "Realism is essentially the democratic art." He was adamant that painting could only represent things "both real and existing." He insisted that "An abstract object, invisible or nonexistent, does not belong to the domain of painting." He was also firm in his ideas about education. In 1861 a group of students, dissatisfied with the state-run ECOLE DES BEAUX-ARTS, asked Courbet to direct an alternative school. Though he declined, saying, "I do not have, and I can not have, students," he agreed to work with them in a rented studio. The model was usually a peasant with a farm animal. While the official 1855 Paris Exposition was m session, Courbet presented an Exhibition of Forty Paintings in a shed called the Pavilion of Realism. His "Manifesto of Realism" introduced the show's catalogue. The most important painting on exhibit was his own large and endlessly intriguing work, a scene set in his studio with himself at the easel painting a landscape, a nude model looking over his shoulder from behind. To the left of the painter are people from Ornans: hunter, peasant, worker, Jew, priest, a young mother with her baby. On the right side are portraits of people from Courbet's life in Paris: client, critic, and intellectuals, including his friend BAUDELAIRE. The title of the work is Studio of a Painter: A Real Allegory Summarizing My Seven Years of Life as an Artist (1854-55); the "seven years" are from 1848 to 1855. The only unequivocal statement that can be made about this painting is that it measures more than 19 1/ 2 feet in length and is nearly 12 feet high.