Jean Désiré Gustave Courbet (UK:/ˈkʊərbeɪ/KOOR-bay;[1]US:/kʊərˈbeɪ/koor-BAY;[2]French:[ɡystavkuʁbɛ]; 10 June 1819 – 31 December 1877)[3] was a French painter who led theRealism movement in19th-century French painting. Committed to painting only what he could see, he rejected academic convention and theRomanticism of the previous generation of visual artists. His independence set an example that was important to later artists, such as theImpressionists and theCubists. 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, andstill lifes. Courbet was imprisoned for six months in 1871 for his involvement with theParis Commune and lived in exile in Switzerland from 1873 until his death four years later.
Gustave Courbet was born in 1819 to Régis and Sylvie Oudot Courbet in Ornans (department of Doubs). Anti-monarchical feelings prevailed in the household. (His maternal grandfather fought in theFrench 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.[4]
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 theLouvre, and painting copies of their work.[5]
L'homme à la pipe (Self-portrait, Man with a pipe), 1848–49,Musée Fabre, Montpellier
Trips to the Netherlands and Belgium in 1846–47 strengthened Courbet's belief that painters should portray the life around them, asRembrandt,Hals and otherDutch masters had. By 1848, he had gained supporters among the younger critics, theNeo-romantics and Realists, notablyChampfleury.[7]
Courbet achieved his first Salon success in 1849 with his paintingAfter Dinner at Ornans. The work, reminiscent ofChardin andLe Nain, earned Courbet a gold medal and was purchased by the state.[8] The gold medal meant that his works would no longer require jury approval for exhibition at the Salon[9]—an exemption Courbet enjoyed until 1857 (when the rule changed).[10]
In 1849–50, Courbet paintedThe Stone Breakers (destroyed in the AlliedBombing of Dresden in 1945), whichProudhon admired as an icon of peasant life; it has been called "the first of his great works".[11] 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."[11]
Courbet's work belonged neither to the predominantRomantic norNeoclassical schools.History painting, which theParis 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 ..."[12] Instead, he maintained that the only possible source for living art is the artist's own experience.[12] He andJean-François Millet would find inspiration painting the life of peasants and workers.[13]
Courbet paintedfigurative 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 ofHonoré Daumier and Jean-François Millet, became known asRealism. 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 innature. He depicted the harshness of life, and in doing so challenged contemporary academic ideas of art. One of the distinctive features of Courbet's Realism was his lifelong attachment to his native province, the Franche-Comté, and of his birthplace, Ornans.
Gustave Courbet,The Stone Breakers 1849, oil on canvas, first exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1850, destroyed during World War II.
Considered to be the first of Courbet's great works,The Stone Breakers of 1849 is an example of social realism that caused a sensation when it was first exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1850. The work was based on two men, one young and one old, whom Courbet discovered engaged in backbreaking labor on the side of the road when he returned to Ornans for an eight-month visit in October 1848. On his inspiration, Courbet told his friends and art critics Francis Wey and Jules Champfleury, "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."[14]
While other artists had depicted the plight of the rural poor, Courbet's peasants are not idealized like those in works such as Breton's 1854 painting,The Gleaners.[15]
During World War II, from 13 to 15 February 1945, theAllies continuouslybombed the city ofDresden, Germany. German troops hastily loaded artworks from Dresden's galleries and museums onto trucks.The Stone Breakers wasdestroyed, along with 153 other paintings, when a transport vehicle moving the pictures to theKönigstein Fortress, near Dresden, was bombed by Allied forces.[16]
Gustave Courbet,A Burial At Ornans, 1849–50, oil on canvas, 314 cm × 663 cm (124 in × 261 in),Musée d'Orsay, Paris. Exhibition at the 1850–1851Paris Salon created an "explosive reaction" and brought Courbet instant fame.[17]
The Salon of 1850–1851[a] found him triumphant withThe Stone Breakers, thePeasants of Flagey andA Burial at Ornans. TheBurial, one of Courbet's most important works, records the funeral of his grand uncle[19] 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 inBurial 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 life in Ornans.
The vast painting, measuring 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 art historian Sarah Faunce, "In Paris, theBurial 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."[20] The painting lacks the sentimental rhetoric that was expected in agenre 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.[20]
Eventually, the public grew more interested in the new Realist approach, and the lavish, decadent fantasy of Romanticism lost popularity. Courbet well understood the importance of the painting, and said of it, "Burial at Ornans was in reality the burial of romanticism."[21]
Courbet, about 1850
Courbet became a celebrity and was spoken of as a genius, a "terrible socialist" and a "savage".[22] 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.[23]
Courbet associated his ideas ofrealism in art with politicalanarchism, and, having gained an audience, he promoted political ideas by writing politically motivated essays and dissertations. His familiar visage was the object of frequent caricature in the popular French press.[24]
In 1850, Courbet wrote to a friend:
...in our so very civilized society it is necessary for me to live the life of a savage. I must be free even of governments. The people have my sympathies, I must address myself to them directly.[25]
During the 1850s, Courbet painted numerous figurative works using common folk and friends as his subjects, such asVillage Damsels (1852),The Wrestlers (1853),The Bathers (1853),The Sleeping Spinner (1853), andThe Wheat Sifters (1854).
In 1855, Courbet submitted fourteen paintings for exhibition at theExposition Universelle. Three were rejected for lack of space, includingA Burial at Ornans and his other monumental canvasThe Artist's Studio.[26] Refusing to be denied, Courbet took matters into his own hands. He displayed forty of his paintings, includingThe Artist's Studio, in his gallery calledThe Pavilion of Realism (Pavillon du Réalisme) which was a temporary structure that he erected next door to the officialSalon-likeExposition Universelle.[26]
The work is an allegory of Courbet's life as a painter, seen as a heroic venture, in which he is flanked by friends and admirers on the right, and challenges and opposition to the left. Friends on the right include theart criticsChampfleury, andCharles Baudelaire, and art collectorAlfred Bruyas. On the left are figures (priest, prostitute, grave digger, merchant, and others) who represent what Courbet described in a letter to Champfleury as "the other world of trivial life, the people, misery, poverty, wealth, the exploited and the exploiters, the people who live off death."[27]
In the foreground of the left-hand side is a man with dogs, who was not mentioned in Courbet's letter to Champfleury. X-rays show he was painted later, but his role in the painting is important: he is an allegory of the then-current French Emperor,Napoleon III, identified by his famous hunting dogs and iconic twirled mustache. By placing him on the left, Courbet publicly shows his disdain for the emperor and depicts him as a criminal, suggesting that his "ownership" of France is an illegal one.[28]
Although artists likeEugène Delacroix were ardent champions of his effort, the public went to the show mostly out of curiosity and to deride him. Attendance and sales were disappointing,[29] but Courbet's status as a hero to the Frenchavant-garde became assured. He was admired by the AmericanJames Abbott McNeill Whistler, and he became an inspiration to the younger generation of French artists includingÉdouard Manet and theImpressionist painters.The Artist's Studio was recognized as a masterpiece by Delacroix, Baudelaire, and Champfleury, if not by the public.
Gustave Courbet,The Sailboat (Seascape), c. 1869, oil on canvas,Clark Art Institute
While Courbet's seascapes, painted during his many visits to the northern coast of France in the late 1860s, were decidedly less controversial than his salon submissions, they furthered his contributions (willing or otherwise) to realism with their emphasis on both the beauty and danger of the natural world. There is a distinct range in the tones of this period withThe Calm Sea (1869) depicting the serenity of the receded tide, andThe Sailboat (c. 1869) showing a sailboat wrestling with violent tides.[30]
Courbet wrote a Realist manifesto for the introduction to the catalogue of this independent, personal exhibition, echoing the tone of the period's political manifestos. In it, he asserts his goal as an artist is "to translate the customs, the ideas, the appearance of my epoch according to my own estimation."[31]
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.
Without expanding on the greater or lesser accuracy of a name that 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.
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.
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, 1855)[32]
In the Salon of 1857, Courbet showed six paintings. These includedYoung Ladies on the Banks of the Seine (Summer), depicting two prostitutes under a tree,[33] 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 andThe Quarry.[10]
Young Ladies on the Banks of the Seine, painted in 1856,[34] 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.[35]
By exhibiting sensational works alongside hunting scenes, of the sort that had brought popular success to the English painterEdwin Landseer, Courbet guaranteed himself "both notoriety and sales".[36]
During the 1860s, Courbet painted a series of increasinglyerotic works such asFemme nue couchée, culminating inThe Origin of the World (L'Origine du monde) (1866), which depicts femalegenitalia and was not publicly exhibited until 1988,[37] andSleep (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.[38]
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 LiberalÉmile Ollivier, previously a leader of the opposition to Napoléon's regime, as thede facto Prime Minister in 1870. As a sign of appeasement to the Liberals who admired Courbet, Napoleon III nominated him to theLegion 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 regime.
A satirical sketch of Gustave Courbet taking down a "Rambuteau column" (a urinal),caricature published by a popular Commune newspaper, thePère Duchêne illustréCommune officials pose with the wreckage of theVendôme column, pulled down based on a suggestion of Courbet. After the fall of the Commune, he was ordered to pay the cost of putting the column back up.
On 4 September 1870, during theFranco-Prussian War, Courbet made a proposal that later came back to haunt him. He wrote a letter to the Government of National Defense, proposing that the column in thePlace Vendôme, erected byNapoleon I to honour the victories of the French Army, be taken down. He wrote:
In as much as the Vendôme Column is a monument devoid of all artistic value, tending to perpetuate by its expression the ideas of war and conquest of the past imperial dynasty, which are reproved by a republican nation's sentiment, citizen Courbet expresses the wish that the National Defense government will authorize him to disassemble this column."[39]
Courbet proposed that the Column be moved to a more appropriate place, such as theHotel des Invalides, a military hospital. He also wrote an open letter addressed to the German Army and to German artists, proposing that German and French cannons should be melted down and crowned with a liberty cap, and made into a new monument on Place Vendôme, dedicated to the federation of the German and French people. The Government of National Defense did nothing about his suggestion to tear down the column, but it was not forgotten.[40]
Portrait of poetMax Buchon by Courbet: the two were lifelong friends.[41]
On 18 March, in the aftermath of the French defeat in theFranco-Prussian War, a revolutionary government called theParis Commune briefly took power in the city. Courbet played an active part and organized a Federation of Artists, which held its first meeting on 5 April in the Grand Amphitheater of the School of Medicine. Some three hundred to four hundred painters, sculptors, architects, and decorators attended. There were some famous names on the list of members, includingAndré Gill,Honoré Daumier,Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot,Eugène Pottier,Jules Dalou, andÉdouard Manet. Manet was not in Paris during the Commune and did not attend, and Corot, who was seventy-five years old, stayed in a country house and his studio during the Commune, not taking part in the political events.
Courbet chaired the meeting and proposed that theLouvre and theMusée du Luxembourg, the two major art museums of Paris, closed during the uprising, be reopened as soon as possible and that the traditional annual exhibit called theSalon be held as in years past, but with radical differences. He proposed that the Salon should be free of any government interference or rewards to preferred artists; no medals or government commissions would be given. Furthermore, he called for the abolition of the most famous state institutions of French art; theÉcole des Beaux-Arts, theFrench Academy in Rome, theFrench School at Athens, and the Fine Arts section of theInstitute of France.[42]
On 12 April, the executive committee of the Commune gave Courbet, though he was not yet officially a member of the Commune, the assignment of opening the museums and organizing the Salon. They issued the following decree at the same meeting: "The Column of the Place Vendôme will be demolished."[43] On 16 April, special elections were held to replace more moderate members of the Commune who had resigned their seats, and Courbet was elected as a delegate for the6th arrondissement of Paris. He was given the title of Delegate of Fine Arts, and on 21 April he was also made a member of the Commission on Education. At the meeting of the commission on 27 April, the minutes reported that Courbet requested the demolition of the Vendôme column be carried out and that the column would be replaced by an allegorical figure representing the taking of power of the Commune on 18 March.[43]
Nonetheless, Courbet was a dissident by nature, and he was soon in opposition with the majority of the Commune members on some of its measures. He was one of a minority of Commune Members who opposed the creation of a Committee on Public Safety, modeled on the committee of the same name which carried out theReign of Terror during theFrench Revolution.[44]
Courbet opposed the Commune on another more serious matter: the arrest of his friend Gustave Chaudey, a prominent socialist, magistrate, and journalist, whose portrait Courbet had painted. The popular Commune newspaper,Le Père Duchesne, accused Chaudey, when he was briefly deputy mayor of the9th arrondissement before the Commune was formed, of ordering soldiers to fire on a crowd that had surrounded the Hôtel de Ville. Courbet's opposition was of no use; on 23 May 1871, in the final days of the Commune, Chaudey was shot by a Commune firing squad. According to some sources Courbet resigned from the Commune in protest.[45]
On 13 May, on the proposal of Courbet, the Paris house ofAdolphe Thiers, the chief executive of the French government, was demolished, and his art collection confiscated. Courbet proposed that the confiscated art be given to the Louvre and other museums, but the director of the Louvre refused to accept it.[46] On 16 May, just nine days before the fall of the Commune, in a large ceremony with military bands and photographers, the Vendôme column was pulled down and broke into pieces. Some witnesses said Courbet was there, others denied it. The following day, the Federation of Artists debated dismissing directors of the Louvre and of the Luxembourg museums, suspected by some in the Commune of having secret contacts with the French government, and appointed new heads of the museums.
One of a series of still-life paintings Courbet made while in prison for his role in the Commune (1871). He was allowed an easel and paints, but he could not have models pose for him.
According to one legend, Courbet defended the Louvre and other museums against "looting mobs", but there are no records of any such attacks on the museums. The only real threat to the Louvre came during "Bloody Week", 21–28 May 1871, when a unit of Communards, led by a Commune general, Jules Bergeret, set fire to theTuileries Palace, next to the Louvre.[47] The fire spread to the library of the Louvre, which was destroyed, but the efforts of museum curators and firemen saved the art gallery.[48]
After the final suppression of the Commune by the French army on 28 May, Courbet went into hiding in the apartments of different friends. He was arrested on 7 June. At his trial before a military tribunal on 14 August, Courbet argued that he had only joined the Commune to pacify it and that he had wanted to move the Vendôme Column, not destroy it. He said he had only belonged to the Commune for a short period, and rarely attended its meetings. He was convicted, but given a lighter sentence than other Commune leaders: six months in prison and a fine of five hundred francs. Serving part of his sentence in theSainte-Pélagie Prison in Paris, he was allowed an easel and paints, but he could not have models pose for him. He did a famous series of still-life paintings of flowers and fruit during his confinement.[49]
Courbet completed his prison sentence on 2 March 1872, but his problems caused by the destruction of the Vendôme Column were still not over. In 1873, the newly elected president of the Republic,Patrice de MacMahon, announced plans to rebuild the column, with the cost to be paid by Courbet. Unable to pay, Courbet went into a self-imposed exile in Switzerland to avoid bankruptcy. In the following years, he participated in Swiss regional and national exhibitions. Surveilled by the Swiss intelligence service, he enjoyed in the small Swiss art world the reputation as head of the "realist school" and inspired younger artists such asAuguste Baud-Bovy andFerdinand Hodler.[50]
Important works from this period include several paintings oftrout, "hooked and bleeding from the gills",[51] that have been interpreted as allegorical self-portraits of the exiled artist.[51] In his final years, Courbet painted landscapes, including several scenes ofwater mysteriously emerging from the depths of the earth in theJura Mountains of theFrance–Switzerland border.[52] Courbet also worked on sculpture during his exile. Previously, in the early 1860s, he had produced a few sculptures, one of which – theFisherman of Chavots (1862) – he donated to Ornans for a public fountain, but it was removed after Courbet's arrest.[53]
In May 1877, the state set the final cost of reconstructing the Vendôme Column at 323,000 francs for Courbet to repay in annual installments of 10,000 francs for the next 33 years.[54] On 31 December 1877, a day before the first installment was due,[55] Courbet died, aged 58, inLa Tour-de-Peilz, Switzerland, of aliver disease aggravated by heavy drinking.
I have always lived in freedom; let me end my life free; when I am dead let this be said of me: 'He belonged to no school, to no church, to no institution, to no academy, least of all to any régime except the régime of liberty.'[58]
Both artists sought to transcend the conventional methods of rendering nature; Cézanne through adialectical method revealing the process of seeing, Courbet by his materialism.[63] The Cubists would combine these two approaches in developing a revolution in art.[64]
On a formal level, Courbet wished to convey the physical characteristics of what he was painting: its density, weight, and texture. Art criticJohn Berger said: "No painter before Courbet was ever able to emphasize so uncompromisingly the density and weight of what he was painting."[65] This emphasis on material reality endowed his subjects with dignity.[66] Berger observed that the Cubist painters "were at great pains to establish the physical presence of what they were representing. And in this, they are the heirs of Courbet."[67]
During theThird Reich (1933–1945) Jewish art collectors throughout Europe had their property seized as part of theHolocaust. Many artworks created by Courbet were looted by Nazis and their agents during this period and have only recently been reclaimed by the families of the previous owners.
Courbet'sLa Falaise d'Etretat was owned by the Jewish collector Marc Wolfson and his wife Erna, who both were murdered inAuschwitz. After disappearing during theNazi occupation of France, it reappeared years later at themusée d'Orsay.[68]
Gustav Courbet's paintingsVillage Girl With Goat,The Father, andLandscape With Rocks were discovered in theGurlitt Trove of art stashed in Munich. It is not known to whom they belonged.[71][72]
Josephine Weinmann and her family, who were German Jews, had ownedLe Grand Pont before they were forced to flee. The Nazi militant Herbert Schaefer acquired it and loaned it to theYale University Art Gallery, against whom the Weinmanns filed a claim.[73]
The FrenchDatabase of Art Objects at the Jeu de Paume (Cultural Plunder by the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg) has 41 entries for Courbet.[74]
In March 2023, a museum at theUniversity of Cambridge, in theUnited Kingdom, returned a paintingLa Ronde Enfantine by Gustave Courbet, which was stolen in 1941 by the Nazis inParis. The canvas belonged to a Jewish member of the Resistance. TheSpoliation Advisory Panel, a body created in 2000 by the British government, concluded on 28 March "that the painting was stolen by the Nazi occupation forces because Robert Bing was Jewish".[75]
^Toussaint, Helene (1978).Gustave Courbet, 1819–1877 : [exhibition] at the Royal Academy of Arts, 19 January – 19 March 1978 : [catalog]. London: Arts Council of Great Britain. [An exhibition organ. by the Réunion des Musées Nationaux. Organ. committee: Alan Bowness...] p. 265.ISBN0-7287-0152-9.
^Berger 1965, p. 52: "You can see it in the way [Courbet] painted an apple or a wave, or in the way, he painted the heavy languor and creased dresses of two girls lying by the Seine."
^Berger 1965, p. 51: "The preparations for the revolution of Cubism were begun in the nineteenth century by two artists: Courbet and Cézanne." and p. 55: "the revolutionary inheritance that the nineteenth century bequeathed to the twentieth century: the materialism of Courbet and the dialectic of Cézanne."
^Berger 1965, p. 51: "The importance of Cézanne for the Cubists has been stressed so often that it has become a commonplace."
^Berger 1965, pp. 51–52: "Both Courbet and Cézanne change the emphasis of the painter's approach to nature: Courbet by his materialism, Cézanne in his dialectical view of the process of looking at nature."
^Berger 1965, pp. 55–56: "The task was to combine the two. Followed up separately, each would lead to a cul-de-sac: Courbet's materialism would become mechanical; the force of gravity, which gave such dignity to his subjects, would become oppressive and literal. Cézanne's dialectic would become more and more disembodied and its harmony would be obtained at the price of physical indifference. Today, both examplesare followed up separately." (italics in original).
^Berger 1965, pp. 52–53: "Courbet, whilst still using paint on canvas, wanted to go beyond [pictorial] conventions and find the equivalent of the physical sensation of the material objects portrayed: their weight, their temperature, their texture. What perspective towards the horizon meant toPoussin,the force of gravity meant to Courbet." (italics in original).
Danto, Arthur (23 January 1989). "Courbet".The Nation. pp. 97–100.
Faunce, Sarah;Nochlin, Linda (1988).Courbet Reconsidered. Issued on the occasion of an exhibition to open at the Brooklyn Museum Nov. 4, 1988 – Jan. 16, 1989, the Minneapolis Inst. of Arts Febr. 18 – April 30, 1989. Brooklyn, NY: Brooklyn Museum.ISBN0-300-04298-1.
Fischer, Matthias (2009).Der junge Hodler. Eine Künstlerkarriere 1872–1897. Wädenswil: Nimbus.ISBN978-3-907142-30-1.
Monographs on the art and life of Courbet have been written by Estignard (Paris, 1874), D'Ideville (Paris, 1878), Silvestre inLes artistes français (Paris, 1878),Isham in Van Dyke'sModern French Masters (New York, 1896), Meier-Graefe,Corot and Courbet (Leipzig, 1905), Cazier (Paris, 1906), Riat (Paris, 1906), Muther (Berlin, 1906), Robin (Paris, 1909), Benedite (Paris, 1911) and Lazár Béla (Paris, 1911). Consult alsoMuther,History of Modern Painting, volume ii (London, 1896, 1907); Patoux, "Courbet" inLes artistes célèbres andLa vérité sur Courbet (Paris, 1879); Le Men,Courbet (New York, 2008).
Bond, Anthony, "Embodying the Real",Body. The Art Gallery of New South Wales (1997).
Champfleury,Les Grandes Figures d'hier et d'aujourd'hui (Paris, 1861)
Chu, Petra ten Doesschate.Courbet in Perspective. (Prentice Hall, 1977)ISBN9780131844322
Chu, Petra ten Doesschate and Gustave Courbet.Letters of Gustave Courbet. (Chicago: Univ Chicago Press, 1992)ISBN0-226-11653-0
Chu, Petra ten Doesschate.The Most Arrogant Man in France: Gustave Courbet and the Nineteenth-Century Media Culture. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007)ISBN0-691-12679-8
Howe, Jeffery (ed.),Courbet. Mapping Realism. Paintings from the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium and American Collections, exhibition catalogue, McMullen Museum of Art, Boston College, 1 September – 8 December 2013 [distributed by the University of Chicago Press]
Savatier, Thierry,El origen del mundo. Historia de un cuadro de Gustave Courbet. Ediciones TREA (Gijón, 2009).ISBN978-84-9704-471-4
Tennant Jackson, Jenny, "Courbet's Trauerspiel: Trouble with Women in the Painter's Studio." in G. Pollock (ed.),Visual Politics of Psychoanalysis, London: I.B.Tauris, 2013.ISBN978-1-78076-316-3
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