Starred Review. French painter Gustave Courbet (1819-1877), an early master of Realism, is famous for his evocative portraits and landscapes, his profound understanding of shadow and light and his working-class sympathies, all well represented in this beautiful, comprehensive monograph. The text provided by Le Men, a specialist in 19th century French art, chronicles Courbet's life in detail, beginning with his childhood in the provincial Ornans, a setting that would be highly influential in both his art and politics. By the time Courbet made it to Paris in the 1840s, the chaotic artist-bohemian scene that greeted him was a radical, populist and uneasy departure from the Romantic model, a reflection of "the confusion and the difficulties of a social group becoming aware of itself," as well as the end of art patronage in a world where "money was still king." Looking into his social motives as well as his aesthetic values, intelligence, talent and ambition, Le Men charts the progress of the man, and the movement, as he becomes a vigilant witness for the lower classes and those in the Provinces. Visually, one could not hope for a more impressive, complete collection of the artist's work-beginning with his first painting, done at age ten. Le Men also offers a great deal of insight into Courbet's materials and artistic process, including elaboration on the artist's recurring metaphors.

The bigger and richer the reproductions the better when it comes to the paintings of Courbet, an artist of dramatic contrast and grand vitality, whether he is depicting water, sky, trees, or flesh. Art books don’t get more lavish and heart-revving than this. Oversize and lustrous, it is also fresh and inclusive in its comprehensive discussion of Courbet’s life, work, and society. An assured, even cocky, and commanding nineteenth-century French artist radical in his championing of realism and embrace of romanticism, Courbet reveled in earthiness, infused his work with his belief in the nobility of the common man, and captured a spectrum of moods in both his tender portraits and glorious landscapes. With each page in this magnificent book, Courbet’s wiliness and genius come into sharper focus. Self-mythologizing and inspired by Balzac, Hugo, and Baudelaire, Courbet lived large and unabashedly celebrated sensuality. Considered the first modern artist, he owed a great debt to Rembrandt and is equally bewitching in the profoundly moving masterpiece, A Burial at Ornans, and the infamously explicit The Origin of the World. --Donna Seaman