Gustave Courbet

Gustave Courbet (1819–1877), born in Ornans in the Franche-Comté, became the leading figure of French Realism, painting the life he actually saw rather than the idealized subjects favored by academic tradition. His early Salon works, After Dinner at Ornans, The Stone Breakers, and A Burial at Ornans, scandalized Paris by giving peasants and ordinary townspeople the monumental scale once reserved for history painting; the Burial's crowd of unglamorized mourners was seen as a deliberate affront to convention.