Realism was an artistic movement that began in France in the 1840s, after the 1848

Revolution.[1] Realists rejected Romanticism, which had dominated French literature and art
since the late 18th century. Realism revolted against the exotic subject matter and the
exaggerated emotionalism and drama of the Romantic movement. Instead, it sought to portray
real and typical contemporary people and situations with truth and accuracy, and not avoiding
unpleasant or sordid aspects of life. The movement aimed to focus on unidealized subjects and
events that were previously rejected in art work. Realist works depicted people of all classes in
situations that arise in ordinary life, and often reflected the changes brought by
the Industrial and Commercial Revolutions. Realism was primarily concerned with how things
appeared to the eye, rather than containing ideal representations of the world [2]. The
popularity of such "realistic" works grew with the introduction of photography—a new visual
source that created a desire for people to produce representations which look objectively real.
The Realists depicted everyday subjects and situations in contemporary settings, and
attempted to depict individuals of all social classes in a similar manner. Gloomy earth toned
palettes were used to ignore beauty and idealization that was typically found in art. This
movement sparked controversy because it purposefully criticized social values and the upper
classes, as well as examining the new values that came along with the industrial revolution.
Realism is widely regarded as the beginning of the modern art movement due to the push to
incorporate modern life and art together [3]. Classical idealism and Romantic emotionalism and
drama were avoided equally, and often sordid or untidy elements of subjects were not
smoothed over or omitted. Social realism emphasizes the depiction of the working class, and
treating them with the same seriousness as other classes in art, but realism, as the avoidance of
artificiality, in the treatment of human relations and emotions was also an aim of Realism.
Treatments of subjects in a heroic or sentimental manner were equally rejected. [4] Realism as
an art movement was led by Gustave Courbet in France. It spread across Europe and was
influential for the rest of the century and beyond, but as it became adopted into the
mainstream of painting it becomes less common and useful as a term to define artistic style.
After the arrival of Impressionism and later movements which downgraded the importance of
precise illusionistic brushwork, it often came to refer simply to the use of a more traditional and
tighter painting style. It has been used for a number of later movements and trends in art, some
involving careful illusionistic representation, such as Photorealism, and others the depiction of
"realist" subject matter in a social sense, or attempts at both.

Jean Désiré Gustave Courbet (French: [ɡystav kuʁbɛ]; 10 June 1819 – 31 December 1877) was a
French painter who led the Realismmovement in 19th-century French painting. Committed to
painting only what he could see, he rejected academic convention and the Romanticism of the
previous generation of visual artists. His independence set an example that was important to
later artists, such as the Impressionists and the Cubists. Courbet occupies an important place in
19th-century French painting as an innovator and as an artist willing to make bold social
statements through his work.
Courbet's paintings of the late 1840s and early 1850s brought him his first recognition. They
challenged convention by depicting unidealized peasants and workers, often on a grand scale
traditionally reserved for paintings of religious or historical subjects. Courbet's subsequent
paintings were mostly of a less overtly political character: landscapes, seascapes, hunting
scenes, nudes and still lifes. An active socialist, Courbet was active in the political developments
of France. He was imprisoned for six months in 1871 for his involvement with the Paris
Commune, and lived in exile in Switzerland from 1873 until his death.

Biography[edit]

L'homme à la pipe (Self-portrait, Man with a pipe), 1848–49, Musée Fabre, Montpellier

Self-Portrait (Man with Leather Belt), ca. 1845 - 1877.

Gustave Courbet was born in 1819 to Régis and Sylvie Oudot Courbet in Ornans (department of
Doubs). Being a prosperous farming family, anti-monarchical feelings prevailed in the
household.[clarification needed] (His maternal grandfather fought in the French Revolution.) Courbet's
sisters, Zoé, Zélie and Juliette, were his first models for drawing and painting. After moving to
Paris he often returned home to Ornans to hunt, fish and find inspiration.[2]
Courbet 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 the paintings of Spanish,
Flemish and French masters in the Louvre, and painting copies of their work.
Courbet's first works were an Odalisque inspired by the writing of Victor Hugo and
a Lélia illustrating George Sand, but he soon abandoned literary influences, choosing instead to
base his paintings on observed reality. Among his paintings of the early 1840s are several self-
portraits, Romantic in conception, in which the artist portrayed himself in various roles. These
include Self-Portrait with Black Dog (c. 1842–44, accepted for exhibition at the 1844 Paris
Salon), the theatrical Self-Portrait which is also known as Desperate Man (c. 1843–45), Lovers in
the Countryside (1844, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lyon), The Sculptor (1845), The Wounded
Man (1844–54, Musée d'Orsay, Paris), The Cellist, Self-
Portrait (1847, Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, shown at the 1848 Salon), and Man with a
Pipe (1848–49, Musée Fabre, Montpellier).[3]

Gustave Courbet, A Burial at Ornans, 1849–50, oil on canvas, 314 cm × 663 cm (124 in
× 261 in), Musee d'Orsay, Paris. Exhibition at the 1850–1851 Paris Salon created an "explosive
reaction" and brought Courbet instant fame.[4]
Trips to the Netherlands and Belgium in 1846–47 strengthened Courbet's belief that painters
should portray the life around them, as Rembrandt, Hals and other Dutch masters had. By 1848,
he had gained supporters among the younger critics, the Neo-romantics and Realists,
notably Champfleury.[5]
Courbet achieved his first Salon success in 1849 with his painting After Dinner at Ornans. The
work, reminiscent of Chardin and Le Nain, earned Courbet a gold medal and was purchased by
the state.[6] The gold medal meant that his works would no longer require jury approval for
exhibition at the Salon[7]—an exemption Courbet enjoyed until 1857 (when the rule changed).[8]
In 1849-50, Courbet painted Stone-Breakers (destroyed in the Allied Bombing of Dresden in
1945), which Proudhon admired as an icon of peasant life; it has been called "the first of his
great works".[9] The painting was inspired by a scene Courbet witnessed on the roadside. He
later explained to Champfleury and the writer Francis Wey: "It is not often that one encounters
so complete an expression of poverty and so, right then and there I got the idea for a painting. I
told them to come to my studio the next morning."[9]

Realism[edit]

The Wave (La Vague), 1869, oil on canvas, 66 x 90 cm, Musée des beaux-arts de Lyon

Courbet's work belonged neither to the

predominant Romantic nor Neoclassical schools. History painting, which the Paris
Salon esteemed as a painter's highest calling, did not interest him, for he believed that "the
artists of one century [are] basically incapable of reproducing the aspect of a past or future
century ..."[10] Instead, he maintained that the only possible source for living art is the artist's
own experience.[10]He and Jean-Francois Millet would find inspiration painting the life of
peasants and workers.[11]
Courbet painted figurative compositions, landscapes, seascapes, and still lifes. He courted
controversy by addressing social issues in his work, and by painting subjects that were
considered vulgar, such as the rural bourgeoisie, peasants, and working conditions of the poor.
His work, along with that of Honoré Daumier and Jean-François Millet, became known
as Realism. For Courbet realism dealt not with the perfection of line and form, but entailed
spontaneous and rough handling of paint, suggesting direct observation by the artist while
portraying the irregularities in nature. He depicted the harshness in life, and in so doing
challenged contemporary academic ideas of art.
A Burial at Ornans[edit]
Main article: A Burial At Ornans
The Salon of 1850–1851[12] found him triumphant with The Stone Breakers, the Peasants of
Flagey and A Burial at Ornans. The Burial, one of Courbet's most important works, records the
funeral of his grand uncle[13] which he attended in September 1848. People who attended the
funeral were the models for the painting. Previously, models had been used as actors in
historical narratives, but in Burial Courbet said he "painted the very people who had been
present at the interment, all the townspeople". The result is a realistic presentation of them,
and of life in Ornans.
The vast painting—it measures 10 by 22 feet (3.0 by 6.7 meters) — drew both praise and fierce
denunciations from critics and the public, in part because it upset convention by depicting a
prosaic ritual on a scale which would previously have been reserved for a religious or royal
subject.
According to the art historian Sarah Faunce, "In Paris the Burial was judged as a work that had
thrust itself into the grand tradition of history painting, like an upstart in dirty boots crashing a
genteel party, and in terms of that tradition it was of course found wanting."[14] The painting
lacks the sentimental rhetoric that was expected in a genre work: Courbet's mourners make no
theatrical gestures of grief, and their faces seemed more caricatured than ennobled. The critics
accused Courbet of a deliberate pursuit of ugliness.[14]
Eventually, the public grew more interested in the new Realist approach, and the lavish,
decadent fantasy of Romanticism lost popularity. The artist well understood the importance of
the painting. Courbet said of it, "The Burial at Ornans was in reality the burial of Romanticism."
Courbet became a celebrity, and was spoken of as a genius, a "terrible socialist" and a
"savage".[15] He actively encouraged the public's perception of him as an unschooled peasant,
while his ambition, his bold pronouncements to journalists, and his insistence on depicting his
own life in his art gave him a reputation for unbridled vanity.[16]
Courbet associated his ideas of realism in art with political anarchism, and, having gained an
audience, he promoted democratic and socialist ideas by writing politically motivated essays
and dissertations. His familiar visage was the object of frequent caricature in the popular
French press.[17]
In 1850, Courbet wrote to a friend:
Le Désespéré (Desperation or The Desperate Man) is an 1843-1845 oil on canvas self-portrait
by Gustave Courbet, produced early during his stay in Paris. It is now in the private collection of
the Conseil Investissement Art BNP Paribas but was displayed in the Musée d'Orsay's 2007
Courbet exhibition[1]

In the 1840s Courbet produced portraits of his friends and clients as well as self-portraits,
including Self-Portrait with a Black Dog (1842). He spent time in the Louvre copying works
by José de Ribera, Zurbaran, Velasquez and Rembrandt[2] which started to influence his work.
He broke from his traditional vertical format for the work. He was attached to Le Désespéré,
taking it with him when he went into exile in Switzerland in 1873. A few years later doctor Paul
Collin's description of Courbet's studio included a mention of "a painting showing Courbet with
a desperate expression, for this reason entitled Désespoir"[3].
Self-Portrait with a Black Dog, Portrait of the Artist or Courbet with a Black Dog (French -
Courbet au chien noir) is an 1842 painting by Gustave Courbet, retouched by the artist in 1844.
It is now in the Petit Palais in Paris.

In the Salon of 1857 Courbet showed six paintings. These included Young Ladies on the Banks of
the Seine (Summer), depicting two prostitutes under a tree, as well as the first of many hunting
scenes Courbet was to paint during the remainder of his life: Hind at Bay in the Snow and The
Quarry.[8]
Young Ladies on the Banks of the Seine, painted in 1856,[26] provoked a scandal. Art critics
accustomed to conventional, "timeless" nude women in landscapes were shocked by Courbet's
depiction of modern women casually displaying their undergarments.[27]
By exhibiting sensational works alongside hunting scenes, of the sort that had brought popular
success to the English painter Edwin Landseer, Courbet guaranteed himself "both notoriety and
sales".[28] During the 1860s, Courbet painted a series of increasingly erotic works such
as Femme nue couchée.
This culminated in The Origin of the World (L'Origine du monde) (1866), which depicts
female genitalia and was not publicly exhibited until 1988,[29] and Sleep (1866), featuring two
women in bed. The latter painting became the subject of a police report when it was exhibited
by a picture dealer in 1872.[30]
Until about 1861, Napoléon's regime had exhibited authoritarian characteristics, using press
censorship to prevent the spread of opposition, manipulating elections, and depriving
Parliament of the right to free debate or any real power. In the 1860s, however, Napoléon
III made more concessions to placate his liberal opponents. This change began by allowing free
debates in Parliament and public reports of parliamentary debates. Press censorship, too, was
relaxed and culminated in the appointment of the Liberal Émile Ollivier, previously a leader of
the opposition to Napoléon's regime, as the de facto Prime Minister in 1870. As a sign of
appeasement to the Liberals who admired Courbet, Napoleon III nominated him to the Legion
of Honour in 1870. His refusal of the cross of the Legion of Honour angered those in power but
made him immensely popular with those who opposed the prevailing

Young Ladies Beside the Seine

(Summer) (French - Les Demoiselles des bords
de la Seine (été)) is an oil on canvas painting
by Gustave Courbet. He painted it between late
1856 and early 1857 and presented it to the Paris
Salon jury, which accepted it and exhibited it on
15 June 1857 with two portraits and three
landscapes by the same artist. It was bought by
Courbet's friend and patron Étienne
Baudry (1830-1908), then left by him to the
painter's daughter Juliette, who left it to the
French state in 1906. It now hangs in the Petit
Palais in Paris. A smaller (96.5 x 130 cm) sketch
version is now in the National Gallery, London.