The Great Artists: Romantics & Realists: Courbet (DVD)

Gustave Courbet loved to present himself as a hard-drinking, radical-thinking peasant artist in mid-nineteenth century Paris, but his public image was largely a creation on his own. Courbet's famous peasant scenes like his enormous Burial at Ornans were like nothing ever seen before. This was the art of Realism and many critics were outraged. Courbet defied the critics to secure the fame that he craved and deserved.