Gustave Courbet (1819-1877)

Gustave Courbet, French artist and founder of the realist movement in nineteenth-century French painting, is known for his unrealized depictions of peasants. A popular artist of his time, Courbet often created controversy, pushing the boundaries of propriety through implicit sensuality. Today, The Origin of the World (1866), his most famous and explicit work, shows the abdomen and genitals of a woman lying in an unmade bed.