Equally far removed from, and hostile to, Classicism and
Romanticism was Gustave Courbet (1819-1877), who as head and
founder of the Realistic school exercised a prodigious influence
upon nineteenth-century art. He was essentially a fighting spirit,
determined to overcome official hostility to his revolutionary
principles. Excluded from public exhibitions, he held a private show
of his own works, and defended his theories by spoken and written
arguments. His just claim was that it did not matter _what_ you paint,
but _how_ you paint what you actually see; and in conformity with
his loudly proclaimed principles he often chose subjects that were
offensive to the taste of his day. At the same time we can see now that
he was endowed with a keen instinctive feeling for pictorial fitness,
and that most of his pictures are far from being haphazard snapshots
of actuality. In his student years he had copied many masterpieces by
Rembrandt, Velazquez, Hals, and Van Dyck. How much he benefited from
the example of the old masters is to be judged from his portrait of
himself, known as _The Man with the Leather-belt_ (No. 147).
[Illustration:
PLATE LII.—JEAN FRANÇOIS MILLET
(1814-1875)