Courbet Copy

Courbet Copy

6x6in  oil on canvas board  $85.

Detail: Still Life: Fruit.  Gustave Courbet.

I chose to do a small detail of this particular painting because I had seen the original in the Shelburne Museum in Vermont. (The same museum as the previous piece by Manet.)    I can clearly remember seeing it across the room never guessing it was by Courbet, and  making a beeline right to it. It was brighter than anything I had seen by him but the strong paint handling and some texture was unmistakably his work. To my taste, a lot of his work was rather gloomy so I really liked this one. The set-up for this still life was in front of a window.
As a Realist he believed and and stated that the only possible source for living art is the artist's own experience. He stayed true to this belief all his life, painting only from direct observation.


I can remember his painting, The Origin of the World, made me gasp with shock when I first saw it as a teenager.