42 Quotes by Gustave Courbet

Beauty lies in nature and reveals, once the artist has perceived it, its own expressive power.

On the left is the realist tradition of the 19th century, with its impulse to social description, radical criticism and meditation on things as they are... culminating in Courbet at his mightiest (The Studio, The Funeral at Ornans and a portrait of a trout that has more death in it than Rubens could get in a whole Crucifixion).

Fine art is knowledge made visible.

I have never seen an angel. Show me an angel, and I’ll paint one.

To be able to translate the customs, ideas and appearance of my times as I see them – in a word, to create a living art – this has been my aim.

The title of Realist was thrust upon me just as the title of Romantic was imposed upon the men of 1830. Titles have never given a true idea of things: if it were otherwise, the works would be unnecessary.

It is not possible to have schools for painting; there are only painters. Schools have no use except for discerning the analytic procedures of art.

When I am no longer controversial, I will no longer be important.

Painting is an essentially concrete art and can only consist of the representation of real and existing things.