Gustave Courbet Quotes

Fine art is knowledge made visible.

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

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

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

The principle of realism means denial of the ideal.

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

To be able to translate the customs, ideas and appearance of my times as I see them - in a word, to create a living art - this has been my aim.

Titles have never given a just idea of things; were it otherwise, the work would be superfluous.

When I am no longer controversial, I will no longer be important

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.

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

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.

I too am a government.

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

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

Art or talent, for an artist, is merely a means of applying his personal faculties to the ideas and the things of the period in which he lives.

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.

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

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

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

I have never seen an angel. Show me an angel, and I'll paint one.

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.

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.