Gustav Courbet

Gustav Courbet

Gustav Courbet was born on the 10^th of June 1819. He was a French painter who worked in the Realist style of painting. Gustav Courbet rejected the subject matter of Romanticism and worked on showing real life depictions. Gustav Courbet used this in his painting A Burial at Ornans (1849). He uses oil on canvas and this painting and it  is  315 cm × 660 cm. He depicts what looks to be real life moment, at a funeral using sombre characters to show the mood at a funeral. His use of colour is dark which is accurate for a funeral and his palate is lacking bright colours. Gustav’s style looks to more realistic scenes caught in the moment; you can see that in his paintings they lack emotion and overall drama which is expressed in Romantic paintings. Courbet uses his style of painting to look at the lives of the working classes and show their reality. I like this painting as I think he show the true emotion at a funeral; He shows the true reality of life and death. The painting doesn’t show what happens after death instead it shows a reality of the unknown. The Painter's Studio (1855) is another painting by Gustav Courbet that shows Courbet painting in his studio. The size of this painting is 361 cm × 598 cm. The colours he used are also dark using mostly darker colours such as browns and grey shades. I like how Courbet has included himself at the centre of this painting, painting a landscape. He is turned away from the female model that represents academic art.