How Controversy and Daring Motivated this Self-Taught Artist

The provocative art of Gustave Courbet

Self-portrait, Man with a Pipe (c. 1848–1849) by Gustave Courbet. Oil on canvas. 45.8 × 37.8 cm. Musée Fabre, Montpellier, France. Image source Wikimedia Commons

In the world of art, there’s never been anybody quite like Gustave Courbet.

Part romantic, part revolutionary, part narcissist, part champion of the underclass — Courbet is a difficult figure to categorise.

When I look at his paintings, I’m often staggered by the breadth of his work. For Courbet’s art was forever seeking to breach established norms. Scornful of conventions, he was daring and restless, and courted controversy as if he drew energy from its friction.

A painting like Self-portrait, Man with a Pipe (1849, above), made when the artist was about 30 years old, tells us much about Courbet’s formative views of art and himself. With his head cocked, eyes in shadow and a pipe drooping languorously from his red lips, his appearance is one of brooding satisfaction.

With a touch of melancholy and a shade of ennui, it is a poet’s posture.

Self-portrait (The Desperate Man) (c. 1843–1845) by Gustave Courbet. Oil on canvas. 44 × 54 cm. Private collection. Image source Wikimedia Commons

Compare it with this self-portrayal, subtitled The Desperate Man, painted a few years earlier. This time the eyes are wide open, achieving a look…