Gustave Courbet
Gustave Courbet stands at the center of nineteenth-century Realism, turning away from idealised subjects toward the direct observation of everyday life, the human figure and the landscape around him. His oil paintings, built up with a confident, physical handling of the medium, gave the movement much of its visual authority, while his drawings and works on paper reveal a more intimate register of the same searching eye. This archive gathers thirty-four of his works, overwhelmingly oils on canvas alongside a small group of black chalk and Conté crayon sheets, with dates running from 1840 to 1873, including impressions up to that final year. Portraits, bathers and scenes from contemporary history appear among the holdings.
34 works in the collection · All public domain (CC0)
