Gustave Courbet

The Stone Breakers — founder of Realism

The founder of Realism and the first great artist-revolutionary. He rejected both Neoclassical idealization and Romantic fantasy, painting peasants, laborers, and his own massive ego with brutal directness. His Pavilion of Realism at the 1855 World's Fair was art's first independent exhibition.

Key works

• A Burial at Ornans1850— A village funeral on the scale of history painting — scandal
  Musee d'Orsay, Paris
• The Stone Breakers1849— Labor without sentiment — destroyed in WWII
  Destroyed 1945 (was in Gemaldegalerie, Dresden)

Connections

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