Gustave Courbet: Agent Provocateur

Courbet’s answer scandalised Paris. He gave an ordinary village funeral the grandeur traditionally reserved for history and myth, daring to suggest that his neighbours were as worthy of artistic attention as an emperor. When the organisers of the 1855 Exposition Universelle rejected his daring Painter’s Studio, Courbet built his own exhibition pavilion nearby. If the establishment would not give him the space he demanded, he would create it himself. From confrontational subjects to paint you can almost feel, Rose explores an artist whose pictures, personality and audacious self-promotion made him impossible to ignore.