Gustave Courbet

French painter Gustave Courbet (1819-1877) founded the Realism movement, rejecting academic conventions to paint ordinary life with unflinching honesty. His monumental paintings like A Burial at Ornans and The Stone Breakers shocked audiences by depicting peasants and workers on the grand scale traditionally reserved for history painting. Courbet insisted on painting only what he could see, declaring "Show me an angel and I'll paint one." His commitment to physical reality over idealized beauty revolutionized 19th-century art.

Largely self-taught, Courbet studied Dutch and Spanish masters at the Louvre, particularly Velazquez and Ribera. When the 1855 Exposition Universelle rejected his work, he built his own "Pavilion of Realism" across the street to display 40 paintings. His radical approach directly influenced Manet, Monet, and the Impressionists. A friend of anarchist philosopher Proudhon, Courbet participated in the 1871 Paris Commune and was imprisoned for his role in destroying the Vendome Column. He fled to Switzerland in 1873, dying in exile. The Musee d'Orsay holds major works including A Burial at Ornans, while his landscapes appear in collections worldwide.