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Gustave Courbet
31 quotes
“We finally saw the sea, the horizonless sea – how odd for a mountaindweller. We saw the beautiful boats that sail on it. It is too inviting, one feels carried away, one would leave to see the whole world.”
Gustave Courbet (1819–1877) first seen 1841 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quote from Courbet's letter to his parents (1841); as quoted in Howard F. Isham Image of the Sea: Oceanic Consciousness in the Romantic Century, Peter Lang (2004), Chapter 'Waterworlds', p. 307
“In the coming year I must do a large painting which will definitely get me recognized for what I truly am, for I want all or nothing. All those little paintings are not the only thing that I can do...I want to do large-scale painting. One thing is certain, that within five years, I must have a name in Paris; that is what I strive for. It's hard to get there, I know...To move faster I only lack one thing, and that's money, in order to boldly execute what I have in mind.”
Gustave Courbet (1819–1877) first seen 1845 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quote from his letter (10 March 1845); as cited in Gustave Courbet, by Georges Riat, Parkstone International (2015)
“[T]here's nothing harder in the world than making art, particularly when no one understands it. Women want portraits without shadow, men want to be dressed up in their Sunday best; there's no way out. To earn money with things like that, you'd be better of walking on a treadmill. At least then you would not be abdicating your convictions.”
Gustave Courbet (1819–1877) first seen 1846 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: In his letter (Paris, January 1846); as quoted in Georges Riat 'Gustave Courbet' Parkstone International, 2015,
“It is the most wretched spectacle you can imagine. I won't fight for two reasons: firstly because I have no faith in waging war with guns and cannons, and it is not part of my creed. For ten years I have been fighting a war of wits. I would not be true to myself if I acted otherwise. Secondly, I have no weapons and I won't be persuaded. So you have nothing to fear where I am concerned”
Gustave Courbet (1819–1877) first seen 1848 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quote from a letter to his parents, (June 1848); as cited in Georges Riat Gustave Courbet, Parkstone International (2015).
“I've already done studies [for his large-scale painting w:The Burial at Ornans ] of the mayor, who weighs 400, the parish priest, the justice of the peace, the cross bearer, the notary Marlet, the assistant mayor, my friends, my father, the choirboys, the grave digger, two old revolutionaries from [17]'93...”
Gustave Courbet (1819–1877) first seen 1849 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Remark to Champfleury, (End of 1849); as quoted in Georges Riat Gustave Courbet, Parkstone International (2015).
“It is not often that one encounters so complete an expression of poverty and so, right then and there I got the idea for a painting. I told them to come to my studio the next morning.”
Gustave Courbet (1819–1877) first seen 1850 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quote, 1850's explaining to Champfleury and the writer Francis Wey; as cited on Wikipedia; Masanès, Fabrice 2006, p. 31
“[I]n our civilized society I must lead the life of a savage. I must free myself even from governments. My sympathies lies with the people; I must go to them directly. I must draw my wisdom from them, and they must give me life. For that reason I have just embarked on the grand, independent and vagabond life of the bohemian.”
Gustave Courbet (1819–1877) first seen 1850 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: In a letter, (1850) to his friend Francis Wey; as quoted in Georges Riat Gustave Courbet', Parkstone International (2015).
“[I] painted the very people who had been present at the interment, all the townspeople.”
Gustave Courbet (1819–1877) first seen 1848 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Courbet pictured with his painting A Burial at Ornans (1849/50) the funeral of his grand uncle which he attended in September 1848. People who attended the funeral became the models for the painting. Courbet used no pro…
“I heard the comments of the crowd in front of the painting of Burial at Ornans, I had the courage to read the nonsense that was printed regarding this picture and I wrote this article.. [in Le Messager de l'Assemblée]”
Gustave Courbet (1819–1877) first seen 1851 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quote from an article in 'Le Messager de l'Assemblée' (25 & 26 February 1851); as cited in 'Posterity', Musée-d'Orsay
“In spite of being assailed by hypochondria, I have launched into an enormous painting 20 feet by 12, perhaps even bigger than Burial', which will show that I am still alive, and so is Realism, as Realism exists...It is society at its best, its worst, its average. In short, it's my way of seeing society with all its interests and passions. It's the whole world coming to me to be painted..”
Gustave Courbet (1819–1877) first seen 1854 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: In a letter of Courbet to his friend w:Champfleury, (Autumn 1854); as quoted in 'Courbet Speaks', 'Courbet-dossier', Musée-dOrsay
“When I got back to Ornans, I spent a few days hunting. I quite like the subject of violent exercise...It makes the most surprising painting you can imagine. There are thirty life-size figures in it. It is the moral and physical history of my studio”
Gustave Courbet (1819–1877) first seen 1854 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quote from a letter of Courbet to Bruyas, (December 1854); as cited in 'Courbet Speaks', 'Courbet-dossier', Musée-dOrsay
“The title of Realist was thrust upon me just as the title of Romantic was imposed upon the men of 1830. Titles have never given a true idea of things: if it were otherwise, the works would be unnecessary.”
Gustave Courbet (1819–1877) said by 1877 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Without expanding on the greater or lesser accuracy of a name which nobody, I should hope, can really be expected to understand, I will limit myself to a few words of elucidation in order to cut short the misunderstandings.”
Gustave Courbet (1819–1877) said by 1877 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I have studied the art of the ancients and the art of the moderns, avoiding any preconceived system and without prejudice. I no longer wanted to imitate the one than to copy the other; nor, furthermore, was it my intention to attain the trivial goal of "art for art's sake". No! I simply wanted to draw forth, from a complete acquaintance with tradition, the reasoned and independent consciousness of my own individuality.”
Gustave Courbet (1819–1877) said by 1877 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To know in order to do, that was my idea. To be in a position to translate the customs, the ideas, the appearance of my time, according to my own estimation; to be not only a painter, but a man as well; in short, to create living art – this is my goal. (Gustave Courbet, 1855) - note”
Gustave Courbet (1819–1877) first seen 1855 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Courbet wrote this 'Realist manifesto' for the introduction to the catalogue of his independent, personal exhibition at the Pavilion of Realism in Paris, outside the 1855 Universal Exhibition. His text is echoing the to…
“[An artist must apply] his personal faculties to the ideas and the events of the times in which he lives.. .[A]rt in painting should consist only of the representation of things which that are visible and tangible to the artist. Every age should be represented only by its own artists, that is to say, by the artist who have lived in it. I also maintain that painting is an essentially concrete art form and can exist only of the representation of both real and existing things.. .An abstract object, not visible, nonexistent, is not within the domain of painting.”
Gustave Courbet (1819–1877) first seen 1861 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quote in an open letter ('Credo'), (Paris, end of December 1861), published in the 'Courier du Dimanche', (addressed to prospective students); as quoted in Letters of Gustave Courbet, transl. & ed. Petra ten-Doesschate …
“I will contemplate the spectacle of your sea. The viewpoints of our mountains also offer us the limitless spectacle of immensity. The unfillable void has a calming effect.. .The sea! The sea with its charms saddens me. In its joyful moods, it makes me think of the laughing tiger; in its sad moods it recalls the crocodile’s tears, and in its roaring fury, the caged monster that cannot swallow me up.”
Gustave Courbet (1819–1877) first seen 1864 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quote in Courbet's letter to Victor Hugo, 28 November 1864; as cited in Chu, Letters, p. 249; quoted in 'Paysages de Mer - Courbet's The Wave', by Anthony White
“The sea! The sea!.. ..in her growling fury, she reminds me of a of the caged monster who can devour me.”
Gustave Courbet (1819–1877) first seen 1864 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quote from Courbet's letter to Victor Hugo, 1864; as cited by Sarah Faunce and Linda Nochlin, in Courbet Reconsidered; exhibition catalogue, The Brooklyn Museum, 1988, p. 188
“I have never seen an angel. Show me an angel, and I'll paint one.”
Gustave Courbet (1819–1877) first seen 1860 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Courbet, c 1860's, later quoted by Vincent van Gogh in a letter to brother Theo (July, 1885); in The letters of Vincent van Gogh, ed. Ronal de Leeuw - Penguin, New York, 1996, p. 302
“I am fifty years old and I have always lived in freedom; let me end my life free; when I am dead let this be said of me: 'He belonged to no school, to no church, to no institution, to no academy, least of all to any régime except the régime of liberty.'”
Gustave Courbet (1819–1877) first seen 1869 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: In a letter of Gustave Courbet (1869); in Letters of Gustave Courbet, 1992, University of Chicago Press, transl. Petra Ten-Doesschate Chu,
“I must explain to you what I recently had the occasion to tell the congress at Antwerp: I do not have, I cannot have, pupils.”
Gustave Courbet (1819–1877) said by 1877 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I, who believe that every artist should be his own teacher, cannot dream of setting myself up as a professor.”
Gustave Courbet (1819–1877) said by 1877 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I cannot teach my art, nor the art of any school whatever, since I deny that art can be taught, or, in other words, I maintain that art is completely individual, and is, for each artist, nothing but the talent issuing from his own inspiration and his own studies of tradition.”
Gustave Courbet (1819–1877) said by 1877 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“An epoch can only be reproduced by its own artists, I mean by the artists who lived in it. I hold the artists of one century basically incapable of reproducing the aspect of a past or future century-in other words, of painting the past or the future.”
Gustave Courbet (1819–1877) said by 1877 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The history of an era is finished with that era itself and with those of its representatives who have expressed it. It is not the task of modern times to add anything to the expression of former times to ennoble or embellish the past. What has been, has been. The human spirit must always begin work afresh in the present, starting off from acquired results. One must never start out from foregone conclusions proceeding from synthesis to synthesis, from conclusion to conclusion. The real artists are those who pick up their age exactly at the point to which it has been carried by preceding times.”
Gustave Courbet (1819–1877) said by 1877 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Beauty, like truth, is a thing which is relative to the time in which one lives and to the individual capable of understanding it. The expression of the beautiful bears a precise relation to the power of perception acquired by the artist.”
Gustave Courbet (1819–1877) said by 1877 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Schools have no use except for discerning the analytic procedures of art. No school is capable of pressing on to a synthesis in isolation. Painting can not, without falling into abstraction, let a partial aspect of art dominate, whether it be drawing, color, composition, or any other one of the extraordinary multiplicity of means the totality of which alone constitutes this art.”
Gustave Courbet (1819–1877) said by 1877 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I can only explain to some artists, who would be my collaborators and not my pupils, the method by which, in my opinion, one becomes a painter, by which I myself have tried to become one since my earliest days, leaving to each person the complete control of his individuality, the full liberty of his own expression in the application of this method. To achieve this aim, the organization of a communal studio, recalling those extremely fruitful collaborations of the studios of the Renaissance, could certainly be useful and contribute to the opening of the era of modern painting.”
Gustave Courbet (1819–1877) said by 1877 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“They continue to be the rage. The salon where they are is jammed with people.”
Gustave Courbet (1819–1877) first seen 1870 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quote in a letter to his sister Juliette Courbet, 11 May 1870; as cited in Chu, Letters, p. 375; quoted in 'Paysages de Mer - Courbet's The Wave', by Anthony White
“Here I am, because of the People of Paris [ Paris Commune ], up to my neck in politics. President of the Federation of Artists, member of the Commune committee, city council delegate and delegate for Public Education: the four most important posts in Paris. I get up, I have breakfast, and I preside and sit on committees twelve hours a day. Now my head is starting to spin. But in spite of all this worry and trying to understand unfamiliar things, I am really happy..”
Gustave Courbet (1819–1877) first seen 1870 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quote from a letter to his parents (30th April 1870); as cited in 'Courbet Speaks', 'Courbet-dossier', Musée-dOrsay
“In as much as the Vendôme Column is a monument devoid of all artistic value, tending to perpetuate by its expression the ideas of war and conquest of the past imperial dynasty, which are reproved by a republican nation's sentiment, citizen Courbet expresses the wish that the National Defense government will authorize him to disassemble this column.”
Gustave Courbet (1819–1877) first seen 1870 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quote in Courbet's official letter (4 September 1870), to the Government of National Defense - proposing that the column in the Place Vendôme in Paris, erected by Napoleon I - to honour the victories of the French Army …