Quotes from Gustave Courbet

Beauty lies in nature and reveals, once the artist has perceived it, its own expressive power.

I have never seen either angels or goddesses, so I am not interested in painting them.

I hope always to earn my living by my art without having ever deviated by even a hair's breadth from my principles... to please anyone or to sell more easily.

I too am a government.

France is the only nation in which astoundingly small numbers of civilized patrons reside.

I hope to live all my life for my art, without abandoning my principles one iota.

When we see men of worth, we should think of equalling them; when we see men of a contrary character, we should turn inward and examine ourselves.

Painting is an essentially concrete art and can only consist of the representation of real and existing things.

Beauty, like truth, is relative to the time when one lives and to the individual who can grasp it. The expression of beauty is in direct ratio to the power of conception the artist has acquired.

I am not one who was born in the custody of wisdom; I am one who is fond of olden times and intense in quest of the sacred knowing of the ancients.

Fine art is knowledge made visible.

I am not one who was born in the custody of wisdom I am one who is fond of olden times and intense in quest of the sacred knowing of the ancients.

The expression of beauty is in direct ratio to the power of conception the artist has acquired.

It is hard to please everyone. It is impossible to tell you all the insults my painting of this year has won me, but I don't care, for when I am no longer controversial I will no longer be important.

Beauty, like truth, is relative to the time when one lives and to the individual who can grasp it. The expression of beauty is in direct ratio to the power of conception the artist has acquired.

Fine art is knowledge made visible.

The beautiful is in nature, and it is encountered under the most diverse forms of reality. Once it is found it belongs to art, or rather to the artist who discovers it.

It is fatal for art if it is forced into official respectability and condemned to sterile mediocrity.

Art is a wholly physical language whose words are all the visible objects.

Beauty, like truth, is relative to the time when one lives and to the individual who can grasp it.

The expression of beauty is in direct ratio to the power of conception the artist has acquired.

Painting is the representation of visible forms. The essence of realism is its negation of the ideal.

The state is not competent in artistic matters... When the state leaves us free, it will have carried out its duty.