The Realism of Courbet Source: The Lotus Magazine, Vol. 10, No. 4 (Apr., 1919), p.

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"THE

AMAZON

From the painting by Gustav Courbet

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Volume X

April, I9I9

Number 4

THE REALISM OF COURBET to copy exactly what he saw, and hiswork had none of the artificial arrangements and embellishments that even innovators the opposite page, is a specially like Rousseau and Corot felt called upon fine example of the work of Gustav to invoke. In' this, as in all his practices, of whose a exhibition centenary' Courbet, says Mr. Bryson Burroughs," he seems paintings is now being held at theMetro to have abandoned himself to his merely is writer 'a politan Museum. The subject of stories, who is supposed to have been preferences with no idea of establishing a new sestheticism until the idea'was sug the original of Amandorine in Champ gested by theori"zingfriends. I't is proba Vie Parisienne." Mascarade de Ia fleurv's " As the founder of the Realistic SchoolI ble that his realismwas part of an inevita ble artistic development, for it followed of Painting, Courbet's principles have furnished some of the greatest names to as a reaction to the courtly ideality of the eighteenth century, and when interest modern art. Only things actually seen should be represented, he held, 'and the' w'as returning to the more or less natural classic art. function of the imagination is to find the Courbet came of a peasant family at fullest expression of the- chosen subject. then of Ornans, Franche-Comte, and' his only Whistler, Homer, and Eakins,American painters, were his gift'was for painting. In temperament he the foremost' remained always -heedless and impulsive followers, and it is fitting that the hun as a schoolboy, though in his later years dredth anniversary of his birth, which he became involved in political enter took place on the tenth of June, I8I9, prises, and died in exile. The artist, re should be commemorated in this country. As a student, Courbet felt himself vealed through his pictures, is an ener getic, exuberant person of enormous ap drawn to the great realists of the past Holbein, Correggio, Velasquez, the little petites, filledwith the joy of life and the love of his work. His genius lay in his Dutch Masters, and above allRembrandt, susceptibility to this power, and fecundity "the exact image of life," he said, "who and of nature, and his marvellous ability to but stuns intelligent, charms the express these in his art. massacres the imbeciles." His bent was HE AMAZON," a portrait of Louise Colet, reproduced upon

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