Gustave Courbet (1819 - 1877) Gustave Courbet was born to a prosperous farming family in Ornans, France. In 1841 he went to Paris to study law, but he soon decided to study painting and learned by copying the pictures of master artists. In 1844 he exhibited his self-portrait, Coubet with a Black Dog. Courbet's realism and truthfully portrayal of ordinary places and people went againts the taste ...