Gustave Courbet

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

“I am fifty years old and I have always lived in freedom; let me end my life free; when I am dead let this be said of me: 'He belonged to no school, to no church, to no institution, to no academy, least of all to any régime except the régime of liberty.'”

“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.”

“The art of painting can consist only in the representation of objects visible and tangible to the painter.”

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

“I have studied the art of the ancients and the art of the moderns, avoiding any preconceived system and without prejudice. I have no more wanted to imitate the one than to copy the other; nor have I thought of achieving the idle aim of 'art for art's sake.'”

“Imagination in art is the talent of discovering the most complete expression of an existing thing, but it has never been the talent of creating, or of originating, the thing itself.”

“Painting is an art of sight and should therefore concern itself with things seen.”

“I am not only a socialist but a democrat and a republican as well—in a word, a partisan of all the revolution.”

“The state is not competent in artistic matters.”

“Show me an angel and I will paint one.”