Gustave Courbet

"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 lAssemblée]"

"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."

"[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."

"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"

"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."

"[I] painted the very people who had been present at the interment, all the townspeople."

"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"

"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."

"Ive 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..."

"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, its my way of seeing society with all its interests and passions. Its the whole world coming to me to be painted.."

"[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."

"[T]heres 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; theres no way out. To earn money with things like that, youd be better of walking on a treadmill. At least then you would not be abdicating your convictions."