Gustave Courbet

Courbet left his native Ornans for Paris and became the standard-bearer of Realism, painting ordinary people and his own region on the scale reserved for history painting, as in A Burial at Ornans. When works were refused for the 1855 Exposition Universelle, he showed them in his own Pavilion of Realism. He also painted landscapes, seascapes and hunting scenes. After the Paris Commune of 1871 he was held responsible for the toppling of the Vendôme Column and spent his last years in exile in Switzerland.

Written by Ochre Editions.