Gustave Courbet was born on June 10, 1819, in Ornans, France, and became a leading figure in the 19th century Realist movement and one of the most influential French painters of his time. Best known for his blunt and uncompromising depictions of everyday life, Courbet dismissed the idealized and romanticized subjects admired by academic painters of his era.
Among Courbet’s most renowned works is “The Stone Breakers,” which shows two laborers hard at work breaking stones that will be used for road construction. The painting stands out as a critique of the dignity of the labor profession and class disparity – problems that were prevalent at the time.
1. “I have never seen an angel. Show me an angel, and I’ll paint one.”
— Gustave Courbet
2. “When I am dead, let it be said of me: he belonged to no school, to no church, to no institution, to no academy, and least of all, to any regime except the regime of liberty.”
— Gustave Courbet
3. “Art or talent, for an artist, is merely a means of applying his personal faculties to the ideas and the things of the period in which he lives.”
— Gustave Courbet
4. “I too am a government.”
— Gustave Courbet
5. “Painting is an essentially concrete art and can only consist of the representation of real and existing things. It is a completely physical language, the words of which consist of all visible objects. An object which is abstract, not visible, non-existent, is not within the realm of painting.”
— Gustave Courbet
6. “To be able to translate the customs, ideas and appearance of my times as I see them – in a word, to create a living art – this has been my aim.”
— Gustave Courbet
7. “Fine art is knowledge made visible.”
— Gustave Courbet
8. “Painting is the representation of visible forms. The essence of realism is its negation of the ideal.”
— Gustave Courbet
9. “The title of Realist was thrust upon me just as the title of Romantic was imposed upon the men of 1830. Titles have never given a true idea of things: if it were otherwise, the works would be unnecessary.”
— Gustave Courbet
10. “I am not one who was born in the custody of wisdom; I am one who is fond of olden times and intense in quest of the sacred knowing of the ancients.”
— Gustave Courbet
11. “It is fatal for art if it is forced into official respectability and condemned to sterile mediocrity.”
— Gustave Courbet
12. “I deny that art can be taught, or, in other words, maintain that art is completely individual, and that the talent of each artist is but the result of his own inspiration and his own study of past tradition.”
— Gustave Courbet
13. “It is not possible to have schools for painting; there are only painters. Schools have no use except for discerning the analytic procedures of art.”
— Gustave Courbet
14. “The beautiful is in nature, and it is encountered under the most diverse forms of reality. Once it is found it belongs to art, or rather to the artist who discovers it.”
— Gustave Courbet
15. “When I am no longer controversial, I will no longer be important.”
— Gustave Courbet
16. “I have never seen either angels or goddesses, so I am not interested in painting them.”
— Gustave Courbet
17. “Beauty lies in nature and reveals, once the artist has perceived it, its own expressive power.”
— Gustave Courbet
18. “Painting is an essentially concrete art and can only consist of the representation of real and existing things.”
— Gustave Courbet
19. “Beauty, like truth, is relative to the time when one lives and to the individual who can grasp it.”
— Gustave Courbet
20. “The expression of beauty is in direct ratio to the power of conception the artist has acquired.”
— Gustave Courbet
21. “The principle of realism means denial of the ideal.”
— Gustave Courbet
22. “To know in order to do, that was my idea. To be in a position to translate the customs, the ideas, the appearance of my time, according to my own estimation; to be not only a painter, but a man as well; in short, to create living art – this is my goal.”
— Gustave Courbet
23. “I have studied the art of the ancients and the art of the moderns, avoiding any preconceived system and without prejudice. I no longer wanted to imitate the one than to copy the other; nor, furthermore, was it my intention to attain the trivial goal of “art for art’s sake”. No! I simply wanted to draw forth, from a complete acquaintance with tradition, the reasoned and independent consciousness of my own individuality.”
— Gustave Courbet
24. “I hope to live all my life for my art, without abandoning my principles one iota.”
— Gustave Courbet
25. “The real artists are those who pick up their age exactly at the point to which it has been carried by preceding times. To go backward is to do nothing; it is pure loss; it means that one has neither understood nor profited by the lessons of the past.”
— Gustave Courbet
26. “Titles have never given a just idea of things; were it otherwise, the work would be superfluous.”
— Gustave Courbet
27. “I have studied the art of the masters and the art of the moderns, avoiding any preconceived system and without prejudice. I have no more wanted to imitate the former than to copy the latter; nor have I thought of achieving the idle aim of art for art’s sake.”
— Gustave Courbet
28. “Without trying to clear up the degree of correctness of a qualification which no one, one must hope, will be asked to understand exactly, I will limit myself to a few words of explanation to cut short any misunderstandings.”
— Gustave Courbet
29. “Art is a wholly physical language whose words are all the visible objects.”
— Gustave Courbet
30. “France is the only nation in which astoundingly small numbers of civilized patrons reside.”
— Gustave Courbet
31. “Without expanding on the greater or lesser accuracy of a name which nobody, I should hope, can really be expected to understand, I will limit myself to a few words of elucidation in order to cut short the misunderstandings.”
— Gustave Courbet
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