Gustave Courbet

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.

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.

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

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

Fine art is knowledge made visible.

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.

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.

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