Self-Portrait

Often referred to as a leading pioneer of the Realism movement in 19th-century France, Gustave Courbet dealt with many of the questions raised by Modernism, and his method of confronting these questions greatly influenced younger artists including the Impressionists and the Cubists. He approached his images of everyday life – such as manual laborers, peasants and quotidian events – with a treatment usually reserved for mythological, religious or historical scenes. The lack of idealization in his works contrasted the Romanticism of the previous generation in which he came of age. Courbet’s rejection of Neoclassical and Romantic trends initiated an enormous shift in the trajectory of Western art history, both in subject and form.

Ornans, Franche-Comté, France