Gustave Courbet, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Date of Death

Gustave Courbet

French painter

Date of Birth: 10-Jun-1819

Place of Birth: Ornans, Bourgogne-Franche-Comté, France

Date of Death: 31-Dec-1877

Profession: painter, sculptor, communard

Nationality: France

Zodiac Sign: Gemini

Jean Désiré Gustave Courbet (UK: KOOR-bay, US: koor-BAY, French: [gystav ku?b?]; 10 June 1819 – 31 December 1877) was a French painter who led the Realism movement in 19th-century French painting.
Committed to painting only what he could see, he rejected academic convention and the Romanticism of the previous generation of visual artists.
His independence set an example that was important to later artists, such as the Impressionists and the Cubists.
Courbet occupies an important place in 19th-century French painting as an innovator and as an artist willing to make bold social statements through his work. Courbet's paintings of the late 1840s and early 1850s brought him his first recognition.
They challenged convention by depicting unidealized peasants and workers, often on a grand scale traditionally reserved for paintings of religious or historical subjects.
Courbet's subsequent paintings were mostly of a less overtly political character: landscapes, seascapes, hunting scenes, nudes, and still lifes.
An active socialist, Courbet was active in the political developments of France.
He was imprisoned for six months in 1871 for his involvement with the Paris Commune, and lived in exile in Switzerland from 1873 until his death. 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.'