Gustave Courbet
For me Gustave Courbet is a symbol of someone who knows how to stand up for himself and for his talent. Self secure and sure about what he was doing. Ready to stand up even against the powerful Academy of Arts and Paris Art Salon that refused his paintings due to their "indecent" character. He fought and he won! His stunning "Woman with the Parrot" was finally excepted for the collective exhibition of 1866… Something that Courbet later called a "punch in their faces", showing how much that battle meant to him.
Can you imagine that Monet started to work on his version of a similar painting right away and Cezanne kept a photograph of this painting in his wallet…this sensual work of art had really a bomb effect on the artistic society of that time.
…Wasn’t he also super good looking?
Ok, let’s not get too distracted by the artist's physical attractiveness and let me just share other several works by Gustave.
And, the last but not least - the scandalous Origine du Monde, created on commission for an eccentric establishment personage of that time, a Turkish Egyptian diplomat Khalil-Bay.
It was hidden in a closed room for decades being demonstrated rarely only to chosen friends of the owner. It became open to the public only in 1995 making part of the collection of Museum d'Orsay in France.
It can be considered the most paradox work in the history of arts - so well known and so little seen by anyone in reality.
The painting is surrounded by mysteries.
Paris Match is insisting that Claud Schopp, a well known art critic and historian, discovered the name of the model who posed for the artist. According to the newspaper it was Constance Queniaux, Opera de Paris ballet dancer.
Well, I really love the world of ballet and I am glad that dancers played their important role in this artistic scenery, too.
- "I am fifty years old and I have always lived in freedom; let me end my life free; when I am dead let this be said of me: 'He belonged to no school, to no church, to no institution, to no academy, least of all to any régime except the régime of liberty.“