Gustave Courbet -
Engine of Revolution
Written and narrated by Edwin Mullins
GUSTAVE COURBET stood on the front line both of revolutionary politics and revolutionary art. As an artist he saw himself as a ' realist' and a ' socialist He loathed authority and fought the French artistic establishment all his life. His paintings were thought so scandalous that Napoleon III attacked one of them with a riding-crop. Politically he was a man of the barricades. In 1871 he threw himself wholeheartedly into the revolutionary Paris Commune and when the government re-established control he was held personally responsible for blowing up the column in the Place Vend6me and driven into exile. And yet now he is seen as one of the fathers of modern painting and his great pictures, like ' The Funeral at Ornans' and ' The Studio', bought by the French State, hang in places of honour in the Louvre. His re-instatement takes another step, as a major exhibition of his work opens today at London's Royal Academy.
Voice of Courbet BRIAN BLESSED
Film recordist STAN NIGHTINGALE Film cameraman HENRY FARRAR Film editor IAN PITCH
Executive producer BARRIE GAVIN Producer CHRISTOPHER MARTIN