This exhibition presents 120 paintings, about 30 graphic works and some 60 photographs in an area of 1500 square metres. Since 1977 (when the last major monograph exhibition on Courbet was held in Paris) extensive research in France and abroad has enabled us to re-evaluate Courbet's (1819-1857) oeuvre in the context of the art of 1840-1860. The exhibition will be an opportunity for a new generation to discover the work of a painter who was a major figure in the history of nineteenth-century art in all its breadth and diversity.
This retrospective brings out the complexity of Courbet’s work and its sometimes paradoxical links with the representation of reality and the pictorial tradition.
It reassesses his place in his time and analyses his links with other art forms, particularly photography.
The exhibition therefore gives the keys to understanding a many-facetted oeuvre, the manifesto of realism in 1848-1855 and its consequences for art history. This approach provokes thought about the nature of Courbet's realism and the role of Romanticism in his work.
It sheds light on an influence which was decisive for the adepts of “New Painting” in the 1860s and the beginnings of Impressionism.
