Gustave Courbet- Young Ladies on the Banks of the Seine

GUSTAVE COURBET : YOUNG LADIES ON THE BANKS OF THE SEINE

Courbet was one of the most influential artists and leader of the XIX century realist movement whose paintings challenged and shocked contemporary art critics and French society . Although widely considered as the founder of Realism , Courbet accepted this title only partly as some of his paintings are a mixture of various genres and styles and reflect elements of realistic , abstract , modern , or postmodern painting (Smith

Gustave Courbet and Realism

Jean Dysiry Gustave Courbet was born June 10 , 1819 , in a prosperous

farmer 's family in Ornans , a provincial town in Eastern France . His family had lived there for many generations and Courbet 's strong loyalty to the region where he grew up was later reflected in his painting . He was simultaneously bright and rebellious at school and showed an early interest in art . Courbet trained under several minor painters for some time and then , in 1839 , he finally settled in Paris where he began to study art by copying masterpieces in the Louvre (100 Great Artists Courbet Gustave Smith

Courbet always wanted to exhibit at the Salon , an important annual government-run art show to which French artists seeking recognition had to submit their paintings . At that time , the Salon was known for its resistance to new artistic trends and artists but since it was the only public art show in Paris Courbet , despite his dislike for academy art tried to exhibit there , too . Between 1841 and 1847 he submitted twenty-five various paintings - landscapes , portraits , religious pictures , hunting scenes - and only three of them were chosen but did not create much of an impact (100 Great Artists . Courbet Gustave

In spite of this failure , Courbet became involved with a certain radical group of artists , and critics (among which were Beaudelaire and Proudhon ) who regularly met in the Brasserie Andler , a bar situated not far away from his studio . The group jokingly named it the Temple of Realism because it was there that they developed the basic principles of the new artistic

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movement whose main idea was that art and literature should not be based only on romantic aspects of life but on realism . In what concerned art painters such as Courbet rebelled against the traditional religious mythological , and historical subjects that prevailed in pictures exhibited at the Salon at that time , and wanted to replace them with paintings that depicted unidealized realities of modern life (Gustave Courbet and Realism

After the 1848 revolution in France during which thousands of people were slaughtered at the barricades , Courbet managed to exhibit ten of his paintings at the 1849 Salon due to the fact that the selection committee did not temporarily function at that time . The artist was awarded a gold medal for one of these works , After Dinner at Ornans (1848-1849 . This breakthrough was very important for the artist as it now exempted him from the selection process (Gustave Courbet and Realism 100 Great Artists . Courbet Gustave

Encouraged , Courbet wanted...