Courbet, Gustave 1819-1877

Gustave Courbet by Gustave Courbet ( Book )
259 editions published between 1900 and 2010 in 11 languages and held by 1,025 libraries worldwide
The papers of French painter Gustave Courbet (1819-1877) cover a forty year period, and consist primarily of letters to his family from the time he was in school at Besançon in 1837 until a few months before his death in 1877. The collection also includes one letter to Gustave Courbet from an unidentified correspondent and some correspondence and business papers of his father Régis Courbet. Important subjects discussed in the letters include: Courbet's daily life, his work and personal difficulties including his trial, his paintings and exhibitions, family property, and his travels to Belgium, Holland, and Germay. Family issues appear frequently, including attempts to aid his mother's cousin Natalie Oudot Vertel after the death of her husband. Courbet also writes of important historical events including the 1848 Revolution and Second Republic, the Franco-Prussian War, and the Commune.

Courbet reconsidered by Sarah Faunce ( Book )
3 editions published in 1988 in English and held by 915 libraries worldwide

Gustave Courbet by Sarah Faunce ( Book )
6 editions published in 1993 in English and held by 613 libraries worldwide

Courbet and the modern landscape by Mary G Morton ( Book )
8 editions published between 2006 and 2007 in English and held by 575 libraries worldwide

Courbet by Anthea Callen ( Book )
2 editions published in 1980 in English and held by 542 libraries worldwide

Letters of Gustave Courbet by Gustave Courbet ( Book )
6 editions published in 1992 in English and held by 533 libraries worldwide
The French Realist painter Gustave Courbet (1819-77), a pivotal figure in the emergence of modern painting, remains an artist whose interests, attitudes, and friendships are little understood. A voluminous correspondent, Courbet himself, through his letters, offers a tantalizing avenue toward a keener assessment of his character and accomplishments. In her critical edition of over six hundred of the artist's letters, Petra ten-Doesschate Chu presents just such a look at the inner life of the artist; her unparalleled feat of gathering together all of Courbet's known letters, many heretofore unpublished and untranslated, is sure to change our evaluation of Courbet's creativity and of his place in nineteenth-century French life. Beginning when Courbet left his provincial home at eighteen and ending eight days before his death in exile in Switzerland, this correspondence enables readers to follow the artist's development from youth to mature artist of international repute. Addressed to such varied and key figures of the Second Empire and the early Third Republic as Charles Baudelaire, Alfred Bruyas, Max Buchon, Champfleury, Pierre Dupont, Theophile Gautier, Victor Hugo, Claude Monet, the Comte de Nieuwerkerke, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Jules Simon, Jules Valles, and Francis Wey, Courbet's letters offer numerous insights into the artist's private and public personae, his work, and his participation in the cultural and political life of his day. They will encourage a rethinking of fixed notions about Courbet while they help to form a more nuanced picture of the artist's marketing strategies, his relation to the contemporary media, his deliberate choice of subject matter for Salon paintings, his preoccupation with photography, and his reasons for participating in the Commune. The correspondence is also important for a better understanding of Courbet's work. The letters reveal that the artist produced an uninterrupted flow of portraits of family and friends, work unaccounted for today that appears to be as crucial to the development of Courbet's art as his larger, better-known paintings. Petra ten-Doesschate Chu, a recognized expert on nineteenth-century French art, has spent over ten years collecting, translating, and annotating these letters. Along with her annotations, she has provided this edition with an introduction, a detailed chronology, short biographies of Courbet's correspondents and persons appearing frequently in the letters, a list of paintings and sculptures mentioned in the letters, and an inventory of the letters and their whereabouts. The result is an invaluable cultural resource, as useful as it is readable, as illuminating as it is entertaining.

G. Courbet by Bruno Foucart ( Book )
10 editions published between 1977 and 1983 in English and French and held by 471 libraries worldwide

Courbet by Ségolène Le Men ( Book )
7 editions published between 2007 and 2008 in English and French and held by 460 libraries worldwide
When the great French realist painter Gustave Courbet (1819-1877) began his career in the 1840s, grand historical, mythological, and biblical themes were still felt to be the most fitting subjects for ambitious painting. Yet Courbet, a dynamic and boundlessly self-confident man, proud of his rural origins and guided by his strong republican beliefs, rejected these subjects as too remote from actual experience. Instead, he depicted scenes of everyday life, particularly among the peasants and the working class, with a naturalism then considered shocking. His paint handling was correspondingly direct: disdaining the "licked finish" of the academic painters, he laid on his colors boldly, often with a palette knife as well as a brush. And Courbet's vision was as expansive as it was daring: while his reputation is founded on the heroically scaled realist masterworks A Burial at Ornans and The Painter's Studio, he also executed many excellent nudes (including the notoriously explicit Origin of the World), portraits and self-portraits, landscapes, marines, and even still lifes. This lucidly written monograph from noted art historian Ségolène Le Men provides a new understanding of how Courbet's life and milieu shaped his art. Le Men organizes her text both chronologically and thematically: while the five chapters correspond to the successive phases of Courbet's career, each comprises several subsections that discuss individual aspects of his oeuvre. This hybrid approach allows Le Men to present a multifaceted view of Courbet's artistic achievements, exploring their relation to the politics, the literature, the popular imagery, and even the music of his time. With more than three hundred stunning color illustrations, including all of Courbet's most important paintings and many fine examples of his draftsmanship, this is the definitive study of a painter whose spirited pursuit of an independent aesthetic path has led many critics to call him "the first modern artist."

Courbet by Linda Nochlin ( Book )
6 editions published in 2007 in English and held by 430 libraries worldwide

La Vie et l'œuvre de Gustave Courbet : catalogue raisonné by Robert Fernier ( Book )
7 editions published between 1977 and 1978 in French and held by 230 libraries worldwide