Gustave Courbet Quotes

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

  Gustave Courbet

  Angel, Painting, Goddess

  30 Copy quote

• Fine art is knowledge made visible.

  Gustave Courbet

  Art, Made, Fine

  51 Copy quote

• 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.

  Gustave Courbet

  Art, Real, Painting

  18 Copy quote

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

  Gustave Courbet

  Artist, Essence, Transcendentalism

  27 Copy quote

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

  Gustave Courbet

  Important, Controversial

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

  Gustave Courbet

  Truth Is, Individual, Relative

  29 Copy quote

• The principle of realism means denial of the ideal.

  Gustave Courbet

  Mean, Principles, Denial

  16 Copy quote

• 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 regime except the regime of liberty.'

  Gustave Courbet

  Freedom, School, Church

  "Gustave Courbet".

  28 Copy quote

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

  Gustave Courbet

  Lying, Artist, Expressive

  13 Copy quote

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

  Gustave Courbet

  Angel, Paint, Show Me

  Quoted by Vincent van Gogh in a letter to brother Theo on July 1885. "The letters of Vincent van Gogh". Book edited by Ronal de Leeuw, p. 302, 1996.

  4 Copy quote

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

  Gustave Courbet

  Art, Language, Visible

  5 Copy quote

• 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.

  Gustave Courbet

  Art, Ideas, Able

  12 Copy quote

• 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.

  Gustave Courbet

  Education, Art, Inspiration

  12 Copy quote

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

  Gustave Courbet

  Art, Mediocrity, Ifs

  9 Copy quote

• 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.

  Gustave Courbet

  Beautiful, Art, Reality

  9 Copy quote

• 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.

  Gustave Courbet

  Art, Hands, Order

  15 Copy quote

• 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).

  Gustave Courbet

  Funeral, Meditation, Criticism

  12 Copy quote

• 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.

  Gustave Courbet

  Artist, Knowing, Quests

  8 Copy quote

• 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.

  Gustave Courbet

  Art, Mean, Ideas

  7 Copy quote

• Painting is an essentially concrete art and can only consist of the representation of real and existing things.

  Gustave Courbet

  Art, Real, Painting

  7 Copy quote

• I too am a government.

  Gustave Courbet

  Government, Independence

  8 Copy quote

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

  Gustave Courbet

  Freedom, Matter, Artistic

  9 Copy quote

• 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.

  Gustave Courbet

  Art, Hair, Principles

  7 Copy quote

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

  Gustave Courbet

  Artist, Expression, Ratios

  7 Copy quote

• 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.

  Gustave Courbet

  Art, Copying, Prejudice

  9 Copy quote

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