"The history of an era is finished with that era itself and with those of its representatives who have expressed it. It is not the task of modern times to add anything to the expression of former times to ennoble or embellish the past. What has been, has been. The human spirit must always begin work afresh in the present, starting off from acquired results. One must never start out from foregone conclusions proceeding from synthesis to synthesis, from conclusion to conclusion. The real artists are those who pick up their age exactly at the point to which it has been carried by preceding times."
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Gustave Courbet
Gustave Courbet (10 June 1819 – 31 December 1877) was a French painter who was a leading figure in the Realist movement of 19th-century French painting.
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