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GUSTAVE COURBET (1819-1877)

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Originally appearing in Volume V07, Page 319 of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
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GUSTAVE

COURBET (1819-1877)  , French painter, was born at Ornans (
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Doubs) on the loth of
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June 1819 . He went to Paris 111 1839, and worked at the studio of Steuben and Hesse; but his
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independent spirit did not allow him to remain there long, as he preferred to
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work out his own way by the study of
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Spanish, Flemish and French painters . His first
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works, an "
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Odalisque," suggested by Victor Hugo, and a " Lelia," illustrating George Sand, were
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literary subjects; but these he soon abandoned for the study of real
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life . Among other works he painted his own portrait with his
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dog, and " The Man with a
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Pipe," both of which were rejected by the
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jury of the
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Salon; but the younger school of critics, the neo-romantics and realists, loudly sang the praises of Courbet, who by 1849 began to be famous, producing such pictures as " After
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Dinner at Ornans " and " The Valley of the
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Loire." The Salon of 185o found him triumphant with the "
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Burial at Ornans," the " Stone-Breakers " and the " Peasants of Flazey." His style still gained in individuality, as in "
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Village Damsels " (1852), the " Wrestlers," " Bathers," and "A Girl Spinning " (1852) . Though Courbet's realistic work is not devoid of importance, it is as a landscape and sea painter that he will be most honoured by posterity . Sometimes, it must be owned, his realism is rather coarse and brutal, but when he paints the forests of Franche-Comte, the " Stag-Fight," " The
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Wave," or the " Haunt of the Does," he is inimitable . When Courbet had made a name as an artist he grew ambitious of other glory; he tried to promote democratic and social science, and under the
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Empire he wrote essays and
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dissertations . His refusal of the
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cross of the Legion of Honour, offered to him by
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Napoleon III., made him immensely popular, and in 1871 he was elected, under the Commune, to the chamber . Thus it happened that he was responsible for the destruction of the Vendome column . A council of war, before which he was tried, condemned him to pay the cost of restoring the column, 300,000 francs (b2,000) . To escape the necessity of working to the end of his days at the orders of the State in order to pay this sum, Courbet went to Switzer-
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land in 1873, and died at La Tour du Peilz, on the 31st of December 1877, of a disease of the liver aggravated by intemperance . An
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exhibition of his works was held in 1882 at the Ecole
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des Beaux-Arts .

See Champfleury,

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Les Grandes Figures d'hier et d'aujourd' hui (Paris, 1861) ; Mantz, " G . Courbet," Gaz. des beaux-arts (Paris, 1878) ; Zola,
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Mes Haines (Paris, 1879) ; C . Lemonnier, Les Peintres de la
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Vie (Paris, 1888) . (H .

End of Article: GUSTAVE COURBET (1819-1877)
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