The Artist's Studio

Working in oil on canvas, Gustave Courbet painted this enormous allegory in 1855, subtitling it "A real allegory summing up seven years of my artistic and moral life." He stands at center with a nude muse, a child, and a cat. On the right: friends including Baudelaire and Champfleury. On the left: everyday people representing society.

Courbet declared the whole world came to be painted. The work was rejected from the 1855 Paris World Fair, so he opened his own Pavilion of Realism nearby. Few praised it then, though Delacroix supported it. At 361 x 598 cm, it asserts the artist's role in society on a history painting's scale. Now at the Musée d'Orsay in Paris.