When Gustave Courbet (1819G‡´1877) began his career in the late 1840s, French paintingwas dominated by two competing styles: neoclassicism, exemplified by Ingres,and romanticism, exemplified by Delacroix. Courbet, a dynamic and boundlessly selfconfidentman, proud of his rural origins and guided by his strong Republican beliefs,quickly established a third way. Rejecting the historical and literary subjects of the prevailingstyles as too remote from actual experience, Courbet instead depicted scenes ofeveryday life, particularly among the peasants and the working class, with a naturalismthen considered shocking. His paint handling was correspondingly direct: disdainingequally the idealized contours and cool tones of the neoclassicists and the expressiveline of the romantics, he laid on his colors almost roughly, often with a palette knifeinstead of a brush. While CourbetG‡–s brand of realism bears a family resemblance tothose of his contemporaries Daumier and Millet, its scope is much broader: his masterworksrange from the Burial at Ornans (1850), a heroically scaled depiction of a villagerG‡–sfuneral, to the very different Origin of the World (1866), a detailed close-up ofthe female anatomy, and he also painted many straight landscapes, portraits, and stilllifes.This lucidly written monograph from noted art historian S+¬gol+¿ne Le Men providesa new understanding of how CourbetG‡–s life and milieu shaped his vast oeuvre. Le Menorganizes her text both chronologically and thematically: while the five chapters correspondto the successive phases of CourbetG‡–s career, each comprises several subsectionsthat discuss individual aspects of his work. This hybrid approach allows Le Men topresent an expansive and multifaceted view of CourbetG‡–s realism, emphasizing itsevolving relations with the various ideas and artistic currents of its time. With somethree hundred stunning color illustrations, including all of CourbetG‡–s most importantpaintings and many fine examples of his draftsmanship, this is the definitive study of apainter whose spirited pursuit of an independent aesthetic path has led many critics tocall him G‡£the first modern artist.G‡¥