Courbet Quotes

#1. Courbet comes in 1849 with the intention of overthrowing past art and constructing it anew. While he speaks only of realism, of which he proclaims himself the messiah, his pictures show pre-eminently those qualities which are learned in the museums.

Jules Breton

#2. Steel is such a nice material to use. It can move. It's terribly easy, you just stick it or you cut it off, and bang! you're there: it's so direct. I think Manet was very direct, he didn't prepare his canvases like Courbet, he just put paint straight on and it's very like that with steel.

Anthony Caro

#3. I intend to do a large painting of the cliff at Etretat, although it is terribly bold of me to do so after Courbet has painted it so admirably, but I will try to do it in a different way ...

Claude Monet

#4. Ah, Manet has come very, very close to it and Courbet - the marrying of form and colour.

Vincent Van Gogh

#5. The paradox in the evolution of French painting from Courbet to Cezanne is how it was brought to the verge of abstraction in and by its very effort to transcribe visual appearance with ever greater fidelity.

Clement Greenberg

#6. It may well be that the pictures of Courbet, Manet, Monet and their like contain beauties which escape the notice of such old romantic heads as ours, already streaked with silver threads.

Theophile Gautier

#7. A Gustave Courbet portrait of a trout has more death in it than Rubens could get in a whole Crucifixion.

Robert Hughes

#8. Without trying to clear up the degree of correctness of a qualification which no one, one must hope, will be asked to understand exactly, I will limit myself to a few words of explanation to cut short any misunderstandings.

Gustave Courbet

#9. Beauty, like truth, is relative to the time when one lives and to the individual who can grasp it.

Gustave Courbet

#10. I too am a government.

Gustave Courbet

#11. When we see men of worth, we should think of equalling them; when we see men of a contrary character, we should turn inward and examine ourselves.

Gustave Courbet

#12. The beautiful is in nature, and it is encountered under the most diverse forms of reality. Once it is found it belongs to art, or rather to the artist who discovers it.

Gustave Courbet

#13. Painting is the representation of visible forms. The essence of realism is its negation of the ideal.

Gustave Courbet

#14. I have never seen an angel. Show me an angel, and I'll paint one.

Gustave Courbet

#15. Art in painting should consist only of the representation of things that are visible and tangible.

Gustave Courbet

#16. Fine art is knowledge made visible.

Gustave Courbet

#17. France is the only nation in which astoundingly small numbers of civilized patrons reside.

Gustave Courbet

#18. I am not one who was born in the custody of wisdom; I am one who is fond of olden times & intense in quest of the sacred knowing of the ancients.

Gustave Courbet

#19. Art is a wholly physical language whose words are all the visible objects.

Gustave Courbet

#20. Titles have never given a just idea of things; were it otherwise, the work would be superfluous.

Gustave Courbet

#21. Beauty lies in nature and reveals, once the artist has perceived it, its own expressive power.

Gustave Courbet

#22. To be able to translate the customs, ideas and appearance of my times as I see them - in a word, to create a living art - this has been my aim.

Gustave Courbet

#23. I hope to live all my life for my art, without abandoning my principles one iota.

Gustave Courbet

#24. I have studied the art of the masters and the art of the moderns, avoiding any preconceived system and without prejudice. I have no more wanted to imitate the former than to copy the latter; nor have I thought of achieving the idle aim of art for art's sake.

Gustave Courbet

#25. The principle of realism means denial of the ideal.

Gustave Courbet

#26. I have never seen either angels or goddesses, so I am not interested in painting them.

Gustave Courbet

#27. Art or talent, for an artist, is merely a means of applying his personal faculties to the ideas and the things of the period in which he lives.

Gustave Courbet

#28. When I am dead, let it be said of me: he belonged to no school, to no church, to no institution, to no academy, and least of all, to any regime except the regime of liberty.

Gustave Courbet

#29. The expression of beauty is in direct ratio to the power of conception the artist has acquired.

Gustave Courbet

#30. When I am no longer controversial, I will no longer be important

Gustave Courbet

#31. Painting is an essentially concrete art and can only consist of the representation of real and existing things.

Gustave Courbet