Gustave Courbet, the Revolutionary Artist
The spirit of protest in the artist’s work
Adored or hated, often controversial, Gustave Courbet is considered today one of the major painters of the 19th century. We know his self-portraits, we know his sulfurous Origin of the World, we know his political commitment. But what is important to know is that his arrival in the French artistic landscape during the first half of the 19th century upset the codes established in the world of painting for centuries. He broke these codes and stepped on them. Courbet’s ambition was very humble: to reform painting. And he succeeded, being the leader of a new artistic trend: realism. All his life, he surprised and shocked the art world, the critiques, and the public. But his new look at the changing society of the 19th century, and his way of representing it, made him one of the most famous painters of his time, and still today.
Today, I don’t particularly want to tell you about the painter but rather about the committed man, the political man. For that, I hope you are ready to dive into the history of France in the 19th century.
Gustave Courbet had always had a strong taste for freedom, a desire to transgress, to break the codes. He was a political artist, committed, resolutely modern, but also because he did not hesitate to express his political opinions…
