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 Copy Share Image
“Art in painting should consist only of the representation of things that are visible and tangible.” — Gustave Courbet Copy Share
Titles have never given a just idea of things; were it otherwise, the work would be superfluous. — Gustave Courbet Copy Share
When I am dead, let it be said of me: he belonged to no school, to no church, to no institution, to no academy,… — Gustave Courbet Copy Share
“The title of Realist was thrust upon me just as the title of Romantic was imposed upon the men of 1830. Titles have never… — Gustave Courbet Copy Share
France is the only nation in which astoundingly small numbers of civilized patrons reside. — Gustave Courbet Copy Share
I am not one who was born in the custody of wisdom; I am one who is fond of olden times and intense in… — Gustave Courbet Copy Share
“The real artists are those who pick up their age exactly at the point to which it has been carried by preceding times. To… — Gustave Courbet Copy Share
Painting is the representation of visible forms. The essence of realism is its negation of the ideal. — Gustave Courbet Copy Share
I hope always to earn my living by my art without having ever deviated by even a hair's breadth from my principles... to please… — Gustave Courbet Copy Share
Without trying to clear up the degree of correctness of a qualification which no one, one must hope, will be asked to understand exactly,… — Gustave Courbet Copy Share
Beauty, like truth, is relative to the time when one lives and to the individual who can grasp it. — Gustave Courbet Copy Share
On the left is the realist tradition of the 19th century, with its impulse to social description, radical criticism and meditation on things as… — Gustave Courbet Copy Share
