I have studied the art of the ...

I have studied the art of the masters and the art of the moderns, avoiding any preconceived system and without prejudice. I have no more wanted to imitate the former than to copy the latter; nor have I thought of achieving the idle aim of art for art's sake.
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 Gustave Courbet

Quotes from the same author

On the left is the realist tradition of the 19th century, with its impulse to social description, radical criticism and meditation on things as they are... culminating in Courbet at his mightiest (The Studio, The Funeral at Ornans and a portrait of a trout that has more death in it than Rubens could get in a whole Crucifixion).
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 Gustave Courbet
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.
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 Gustave Courbet
Painting is an essentially concrete art and can only consist of the representation of real and existing things. It is a completely physical language, the words of which consist of all visible objects. An object which is abstract, not visible, non-existent, is not within the realm of painting.
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 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 regime except the regime of liberty.'
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 Gustave Courbet
France is the only nation in which astoundingly small numbers of civilized patrons reside.
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 Gustave Courbet