Realism · 1855
Gustave Courbet 1819–1877
Musée d'Orsay · Paris
Courbet paints himself at the centre of his own world, flanked by the figures of his life — a 'real allegory' summing up seven years.
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Chapter 1 of 7
What you see before you is not simply a studio scene — it is a manifesto. In 1855, Gustave Courbet was refused entry to the Paris World's Fair, so he built his own pavilion and hung this enormous canvas himself. He called it a real allegory of seven years of my artistic and moral life.
Paris had never seen anything quite like it.
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