Gustave Courbet. Une nature engagée

Presented at the museum in collaboration with the Institut Gustave Courbet, this is the first major exhibition in the Orne department devoted to this central figure of 19th-century painting, considered the founder of Realism. More than a retrospective of Courbet?s work, this exhibition-event aims to shed light on the painter?s artistic commitment through his landscapes, testimonies to nature as lived and experienced, as well as his political and humanist commitment. This dual theme is also reflected in the painter?s paintings preserved and exhibited in Alençon at the Musée des Beaux-arts et de la Dentelle: Sous-bois (before 1865), depicting a wooded landscape crossed by a stream, and Un bouquet (1871), a still life painted while he was imprisoned following the events of the Commune.