Gustave COURBET (1819-1877)

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Another Friday Top in Artprice’s alternate Friday series of auction rankings. This week, the top 10 auction results for Nudes between January 2011 and May 2012.

Born in Ornans in 1819, Courbet absorbed the painting trends of his era before liberating himself from the academism and the romanticism of his youth. Although his first works were characterised by sentimentalism, by 1848 his paintings had evolved towards a form of « austere » realism. Henceforward, the artist’s vision gained freedom as it moved away from idealisation towards nature in a broader sense.