Gustav Courbet Essay

Gustav Courbet and Pablo Picasso’s Importance to Historical Representation in Art

Gustave Courbet transformed and re-imagined history painting. His formal and conceptual artistic practices paved the way for successive generations of artists to represent historic subjects in innovative, unrestricted and contextually relevant ways. Prior to his work, the genre was heralded by the academic artistic institutions of the time as the most prestigious of all the different forms of painting. As a self styled rebel, he assaulted the nature of the genre itself. The outcome successfully usurped the academically entrenched hierarchy of painting genres.

History painting generally refers to artworks that depicted famous moments from human and mythological

The latter especially praised history painting, which it used to retell the grand allegorical tales of the ancient civilizations. Courbet’s stark realism and confrontational social commentary offered a powerful alternative.

Courbet and his transformation of history painting

Courbet was born in 1819 in Ornans, France, to a wealthy farming family. In 1839 he moved to Paris to pursue his artistic training by studying at the studio of Steuben and Hesse. This relationship did not endure, and he left to pursue his own, self styled studies. He frequently visited The Louvre to sketch and paint the artworks that hung in its Galleries.

In choosing to educate himself, he rejected the traditional method of becoming an apprentice. This was a rare career choice for an artist during the 19th century. It was a tradition that had stretched back for hundreds of years throughout the history of western art, but as with most aspects of Courbet’s life, he chose to do things his own way. Later in life it became an important identifying component of his carefully created public persona, as a self-taught peasant