Gustave Courbet

Gustave Courbet (1819-1877) grew up in a very wealthy landowning family and received art and drawing lessons at an early age. He always remained closely connected to his home in Franche-Comté in eastern France, even though he was often drawn to faraway places, including Belgium and the Netherlands. He studied law at the request of his parents. However, Gustave Courbet felt more and more the strong urge to become a painter. He left the province and moved to Paris. Fortunately his parents supported him financially at that time.

Gustave Courbet often visited the famous Parisian art museum, the Louvre, to study the works of the famous old masters, to learn from them and to develop himself. He was particularly fascinated by the paintings of Dutch, Spanish and Venetian artists. Gustave Courbet sought the proximity of other artist colleagues and finally had to realize that it was not easy to gain a foothold in Paris as an unknown painter. In Charles Baudelaire, Courbet met an important poet who was also an art critic. In the "Paris Salon", a very important French art exhibition, Courbet was able to exhibit some of his works. A great satisfaction for him and the long awaited confirmation of his artistic efforts was the award of a gold medal for his painting "After the Dinner in Ornans" in 1849. It was only for a few months that Gustave Courbet opened a painting school in order to pass on to his students the artistic experience he had gained. Unfortunately, he got into great difficulties in the eighties, due to his membership of the Paris Commune, the city council. His political commitment ultimately became his undoing when he was blamed for the destruction of the famous Vendôme Column. Denunciations, a prison sentence lasting several months and a heavy fine as compensation for the column forced him to flee to Switzerland. At that time he was already struggling with health problems that robbed him of his strength in the last years of his life. Alcohol and resignation made it impossible for him to create even more outstanding pictures.

Gustave Courbet refused to be called a realistic painter. It was important to him to create art for all classes of people. He also portrayed the simple people, the farmers, stone beaters and street boys, in his paintings. In addition to numerous self-portraits, landscapes, rural and hunting scenes, he created many female nudes, which at first had a provocative effect on the exhibition visitors. With his bold work and masterful command of painting techniques, he paved the way for the following generation of artists, the Impressionists.