Gustave Courbet, a French painter, born in Ornans, June 10, 1819. Going in 1839 to Paris to study law, he developed a decided talent for painting. He received some lessons from Steuben and Hesse, but worked chiefly by himself, and studied the works of the Florentine, Venetian, and Flemish masters. For years he met with little favor, his pictures not being admitted into the exhibition; but after the revolution of 1848 he contributed ten pictures which had an unexpected success. He undertook to accomplish in painting a movement similar to that which in literature had subordinated the ideal to the real, and pursued realistic art with a degree of exclusive-ness which aroused much hostile criticism. In 1855, dissatisfied with the places assigned to his pictures in the universal exposition, he exhibited them in a separate building. In the exhibition at Munich in 1860 he was better appreciated, the jury having assigned a whole room to him. Thenceforth he held a peculiar position in art, standing midway between classicism and conventionalism on the one hand, and romanticism on the other. He took an active part in the movements of the Paris commune in 187l, directed the demolition of the column in the place Vendome, and was prominent in the most impracticable schemes of the insurgents.

When Paris fell he was caught in an attempt to escape and put on trial for treason, murder, and other crimes, but was only sentenced to six months' imprisonment. His pictures sent to the exposition of 1872 were rejected by the jury, on the ground that his conduct during the insurrection had been such as to render him unworthy to associate with men of honor. In 1873 he was prosecuted by the government for damages in the destruction of the column Vendome, and his effects were seized and sold. Courbet's pictures comprise portraits, landscapes, and genre pieces, and he is specially noted for studies of the nude female form, such as his "Woman with a Parrot".