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Gustave Courbet was a French painter who led the Realist movement in 19th-century French painting. Since After dinner at Ornans in 1849 Courbet’ s subject had been drawn from the actual life or the living human experience, because he believed that art should reflect the realities in actual life. To represent the hero of today, Courbet used “colossal” dimension required of history painting which the Paris Salon esteemed as painter’s highest calling but rejected as unsuitable for a genre painting. And he employed a larger than life-size which is appropriate for a culture hero. He wanted to give everyday subjects the effect of a monumental history painting. This was to be a transgression of the academic principle.
In 1855, Courbet submitted fourteen paintings for exhibition at the Universal Exposition. His monumental paintings, The Artist’s Studio and The Burial at Ornans which are his major works of Realism are not admitted to the Universal Exposition. So he decided to organize his own show called The Pavilion of Realism which was a temporary structure that he erected opposite to the Exposition Universe of 1855. In short, he challenged the rigid categories of the Academy not only in a series of his paintings but also in his actual life.
The artist disregarded authority and convention of the academy. However, the trace of the academic tradition remains still in Courbet's painting. This means he was not immune from the Salon’s view. In this paper I examine the relation between Courbet and the Paris Salon, focusing on the composition and rhetoric of The Artist’s Studio . As I demonstrate, the composition of the picture relates to the academic history painting’s central composition, especially The Sabine Women of Jacques-Louis David. The Artist's Studio was called allegory by Courbet. Allegory is the principle rhetoric of the academic history painting. In 19th-century salon’s paintings, the purpose of allegory was the personification of an abstract concept. He was interested in the allegory as an indirect or veiled mode of expression rather than the allegorical personifications. He created his own realism simultaneously using the tradition and the difference. In The Artist’s Studio, Courbet's massed figures The Contradiction of Gustave Courbet: on The Painter’s Studio, A Real Allegory Summing up a Seven-Year Phase (1855) Lee, Jaeeun(Sungshin Women's University, Lecturer) locate theirs place in the academic composition and are to be the allegorical personification. The kind of contradiction was due to the Salon’s gaze that controled the mainstream art of 19th-century Paris.