Courbet Author: Patrick Bade Page 2: The Stonebreakers, c.1850 Oil on canvas, 160 x 238 cm Formerly Gemäldegalerie, Dresden (destroyed) Layout: Baseline Co Ltd 127-129A Nguyen Hue Fiditourist Building, 3rdFloor District 1, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam © Sirrocco, London UK © Confidential Concepts, worldwide, USA All rights reserved No part of this publication may be reproduced or adapted without the permission of the copyright holder, throughout the world. Unless otherwise specified, copyright on the works reproduced lies with the respective photographers. Despite intensive research, it has not always been possible to establish copyright ownership. Where this is the case we would appreciate notification. ISBN : 978-1-78042-092-9 2 Foreword “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 3 4 Biography 1819 Gustave Courbet is born in Ornans, France, son to Eléonor-Régis-Jean-Joseph-Stanislas Courbet, farmer and landowner. 1831 Starts to attend the Seminary in Ornans, where his artistic talents become apparent. 1837 Courbet is sent to Collège Royal at Besançon by his father, in the hope that he would com- plete his preliminary training for a law degree. Whilst studying here, Courbet also attends art courses at the école des Beaux-Arts. 1839 Moves to Paris, where he will meet realist painter Francois Bonvin. He is introduced to other artists, such as Velazquez, and Zurburan, who prove to influence the early stages of his artistic career. 1841 Supposedly in Paris to attend law, much of his time is dedicated to painting and copying works of master artists. 1844 Courbet’s self portrait, Courbet with a black dog, is accepted into the Salon. 1847 The works that he puts forward for the Salon are rejected. 5 6 1849 Several of his earlier works are successfully exhibited. Paints The Stone-Breakers,arguably one of his best pieces, when visiting his family in the country. 1850 Courbet presents Burial at Ornansat the Salon, it causes his first major controversy. 1853 Yet again, The Bathers, entered into the Salon, causes a controversy by offending middle- class viewers. Meets Jacques-Louis-Alfred Bruyas, who commissions one of his portraits. 1855 Eleven of his works are entered into the ‘Exposition Universelle’. In protest to the rejection of one of his paintings, Courbet sets up a personal exhibition, which proves to be a total failure. 1856 Visits Germany, where he is welcomed by the artistic community. 1863 The work entitled Le Retour de la Conference (Return from the Conference)is rejected from the Salon, and later from the Salon des Refusés. 1871 Courbet is imprisoned for taking part in revolutionary activities. 1877 Courbet dies in La Tour-de-Peilz, where he had settled down at the end of his life. 7 C ourbet’s Origin of the world (p.179) is one of the most brutally frank erotic images in the history of Western art. When it first went on public view at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris 1995, it was still capable of causing shock and controversy. Portrait of a Young Woman 1842 Oil on canvas, 71 x 87 cm Musée départemental Gustave Courbet Ornans 8 Such frankness is all the more remarkable in a work of art created during a period of unprecedented prudery and sexual hypocrisy. In 1866 when the Origin of the world (p.179) was painted, Portrait of the Artist known as The Desperate c. 1843-1845 Oil on canvas, 45 x 54 cm Private Collection 10