Happy Birthday, Gustave Courbet! Born in 1819 in Ornans, France, Courbet grew up in a scenic environment with a supportive family. His initial art training was mediocre; he was trained by a minor neoclassical artist, but Courbet rebelled against the traditional style. At the age of 21, he moved to Paris where he mainly taught himself to paint by copying Caravaggio and Rubens, as well as, nature and paid models. Courbet defied the Academy system by painting before completely mastering drawing. Additionally, he rejected any classical treatment of the canvas; he was fully immersed in Realism. His new ideal of Realism focused on painting regular folk in their glorious ordinariness - so much so he declined a request to paint angels for a church remarking, "Show me an angel and I will paint one." In 1848, a group of friends appointed Courbet the leader of the Realist movement in Paris.
Over the course of fifteen years, Courbet had a variety of paintings accepted and rejected in the Paris Salon, including the reluctant acceptance of Burial at Ornans (1849) perhaps one of his most prominent paintings. After repetitive rejection, however, Courbet created his own pavilion across the grounds of the Paris 1855 World Exposition displaying over 15-years of work - quite the controversial act. Toward the end of his career, Courbet's focus shifted to nudes, hunting scenes, landscapes, and seascapes. Particularly his seascapes helped give rise to Impressionism as his water was raw and tangible with thick paint on the surface giving the illusion of water itself.
Always the contentious individual, Courbet was elected Chairman of the Republican Arts Commission under a Paris Commune (post Franco-Prussian War), and under his "watch" the Place Vendôme Column, erected by Napoleon I, was destroyed. After a prison sentence, Courbet fled to Switzerland where he died in 1877. His new style of Realism championed the peasants and paved the way for other artistic Modernist movements.
