Gustave Courbet Quotations

I am not one who was born in the custody of wisdom; I am one who is fond of olden times and intense in quest of the sacred knowing of the ancients.

I hope to live all my life for my art, without abandoning my principles one iota, without . . . having painted as much as you can cover with your hand, to please somebody or in order to sell the picture more easily.

Painting is the representation of visible forms. The essence of realism is its negation of the ideal.

When we see men of worth, we should think of equalling them; when we see men of a contrary character, we should turn inward and examine ourselves.

Beauty, like truth, is relative to the time when one lives and to the individual who can grasp it.

France is the only nation in which astoundingly small numbers of civilized patrons reside.

Painting is an essentially concrete art and can only consist of the representation of real and existing things. It is a completely physical language, the words of which consist of all visible objects. An object which is abstract, not visible, non-existent, is not within the realm of painting.

The beautiful is in nature, and it is encountered under the most diverse forms of reality. Once it is found it belongs to art, or rather to the artist who discovers it.

The expression of beauty is in direct ratio to the power of conception the artist has acquired.

Painting is the representation of visible forms. . . The essence of realism is its negation of the ideal.

I deny that art can be taught, or, in other words, maintain that art is completely individual, and that the talent of each artist is but the result of his own inspiration and his own study of past tradition.

I hope always to earn my living by my art without having ever deviated by even a hair's breadth from my principles... to please anyone or to sell more easily.

Art is a wholly physical language whose words are all the visible objects.

Titles have never given a just idea of things; were it otherwise, the work would be superfluous.

Without trying to clear up the degree of correctness of a qualification which no one, one must hope, will be asked to understand exactly, I will limit myself to a few words of explanation to cut short any misunderstandings.

I have never seen an angel. Show me an angel, and I'll paint one.

I too am a government.

I have studied the art of the masters and the art of the moderns, avoiding any preconceived system and without prejudice. I have no more wanted to imitate the former than to copy the latter; nor have I thought of achieving the idle aim of art for art's sake.

The state is not competent in artistic matters... When the state leaves us free, it will have carried out its duty.

When I am dead, let it be said of me: he belonged to no school, to no church, to no institution, to no academy, and least of all, to any regime except the regime of liberty.

To be able to translate the customs, ideas and appearance of my times as I see them - in a word, to create a living art - this has been my aim.

Art or talent, for an artist, is merely a means of applying his personal faculties to the ideas and the things of the period in which he lives.

It is fatal for art if it is forced into official respectability and condemned to sterile mediocrity.

When I am no longer controversial, I will no longer be important

The principle of realism means denial of the ideal.

Beauty lies in nature and reveals, once the artist has perceived it, its own expressive power.

On the left is the realist tradition of the 19th century, with its impulse to social description, radical criticism and meditation on things as they are... culminating in Courbet at his mightiest (The Studio, The Funeral at Ornans and a portrait of a trout that has more death in it than Rubens could get in a whole Crucifixion).

I have never seen either angels or goddesses, so I am not interested in painting them.

Fine art is knowledge made visible.