Self-Portrait with Pipe, 1848-1849 The rebel. Innovator. Realist. Gustave Courbet painted landscapes, portraits, still-lifes, seascapes, and nudes. Born in 1819 on June 10, he was the man who wore many hats and refused to be categorized by any of them. He was among the first to paint rural and poverty scenes in a social and political context, without melodrama or pretense, and more often than not in a plain and "ugly" way, as some critics called him. In the above famous self-portrait, he is smoking marijuana in his pipe, which explains the "fuzzy" look in his eyes; few self-portraits have this much character. Stream in the Jura Mountains, 1872 In the above painting Courbet uses strong diagonals to contrast with a heavy horizontal middleground. This piece is all about contrast. The color palette here uses cool against warm, and even the textures of this composition contrast jagged rocks against smooth green grass and trees, deep blue sky above against cool ...
Thoughts and inspirations on art from the Old Masters to my own art