Becoming Courbet

Presenting a corpus of works from the painter's youth that we hope will be as exhaustive as possible, from his early years in Ornans to 1844, the date of his first painting accepted at the Salon, via his years in Bisonne and Paris, the result of extensive research, the Devenir Courbet exhibition aims to look back at the different moments of Gustave Courbet's little-known youth, his education, his social circles, his visual culture, and so on.

Becoming Courbet
From 14 December 2024 to 20 April 2025

"The drawing room is very badly set up because there isn't a passable model, I find myself one of the strongest". Gustave Courbet, October 1837 Long before the affirmation of his realist aesthetic, who was the young Gustave Courbet at the age of 20? Despite numerous biographies on the artist, the childhood, youth and training of the young painter have remained little studied or have been exploited, contributing to the narrative of the peasant painter or the description of a temperament that was already independent and resistant to all conventions. This discourse constructs a fragmented, even erroneous vision of the painter's early years, right up to his success in Paris. This is why it seemed important to shed new light on this decisive period. From his time at the Little Seminary in Ornans to his first painting accepted by the Salon in 1844, via his years in Baux-Bois and Paris, the aim of the exhibition is to offer an opportunity to enter into the intimacy of a painter in the making, through rare archival documents and emblematic loans of over eighty works and archival documents, including an exceptional collection of six early self-portraits. In partnership with the Institut Gustave Courbet".